MIKHAIL CHEKALIN

Progressive Electronic • Russia

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Mikhail Chekalin biography
Born May 27th 1959 (Moscow, USSR) - died December 28th, 2024 (Moscow, Russia)

Mikhail Gennadiyevich Chekalin was a Russian electronic musician, composer and audiovisual artist whose career spanned four decades and over sixty albums. The son of Soviet inventor and aeronautical engineer Gennady Federovich Chekalin, Mikhail inherited his father's innovative spirit, toiling away in the underground as an undersung pioneer of Russian electronics. Composing work for film, TV, ballet and theatre, Chekalin's artistic pursuits straddled the burgeoning 1970s Berlin School movement of cosmic synthesizer music along with more traditional Russian classical like Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev.

Displaying an early aptitude for the piano, Chekalin studied in various music schools and colleges and began composing in 1973. Chekalin first caused a stir in 1976 with his Есть такая партия oratio, an avant-garde work for choir and orchestra which won the prize at a Moscow competition for rising musicians, held at the onset of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party. From 1979 until 1992, Chekalin co-founded and ran the Electronic Music and Light Graphic Dynamics Experimental Studio, a literal underground multimedia production studio specialising in music, film and light shows, which also taught graphic arts to children to provide a cover of legitimacy - a bold move in the era of Leonid Brezhnev. This, coupled with Chekalin's interest in Western sounds, resulted in butting heads with the Stalinist bureaucracy a year later after it got wind of the studio's existence, which operated outside the permitted state-owned Melodiya record monopoly, and the artist endured periodic encounters with the KGB - who, Chekalin suspected, were likely behind the studio's destruction in a suspicious water mane break in 1987, just after it finally received legal recognition.

Swimming against the current of contemporary Soviet music, Chekalin's supposedly dissident activities led to his expulsion from the Komsomol youth organisation and his university, ignored by the USSR Composers' Union and denied the funds otherwise granted to an "officially recognised artist." Until 1987, Chekalin existed in a borderline-illegal limbo state, with one foot in the underground and the other in official government-approved circles; while invited to write music for dance and sta...Born May 27th 1959 (Moscow, USSR) - died December 28th, 2024 (Moscow, Russia)

Mikhail Gennadiyevich Chekalin was a Russian electronic musician, composer and audiovisual artist whose career spanned four decades and over sixty albums. The son of Soviet inventor and aeronautical engineer Gennady Federovich Chekalin, Mikhail inherited his father's innovative spirit, toiling away in the underground as an undersung pioneer of Russian electronics. Composing work for film, TV, ballet and theatre, Chekalin's artistic pursuits straddled the burgeoning 1970s Berlin School movement of cosmic synthesizer music along with more traditional Russian classical like Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev.

Displaying an early aptitude for the piano, Chekalin studied in various music schools and colleges and began composing in 1973. Chekalin first caused a stir in 1976 with his Есть такая партия oratio, an avant-garde work for choir and orchestra which won the prize at a Moscow competition for rising musicians, held at the onset of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party. From 1979 until 1992, Chekalin co-founded and ran the Electronic Music and Light Graphic Dynamics Experimental Studio, a literal underground multimedia production studio specialising in music, film and light shows, which also taught graphic arts to children to provide a cover of legitimacy - a bold move in the era of Leonid Brezhnev. This, coupled with Chekalin's interest in Western sounds, resulted in butting heads with the Stalinist bureaucracy a year later after it got wind of the studio's existence, which operated outside the permitted state-owned Melodiya record monopoly, and the artist endured periodic encounters with the KGB - who, Chekalin suspected, were likely behind the studio's destruction in a suspicious water mane break in 1987, just after it finally received legal recognition.

Swimming against the current of contemporary Soviet music, Chekalin's supposedly dissident activities led to his expulsion from the Komsomol youth organisation and his university, ignored by the USSR Composers' Union and denied the funds otherwise granted to an "officially recognised artist." Until 1987, Chekalin existed in a borderline-illegal limbo state, with one foot in the underground and the other in official government-approved circles; while invited to write music for dance and stage works in capital theatres, and playing keyboards for establishment-friendly estrada band Samotsvety from 1979-1981, Chekalin's name was still stricken from programmes, and he was unable to travel abroad when Samotsvety went on tour (only making his first visit outside of Moscow to Prague in 1988). He cemented his status as a cultural and academic maverick by providing annual light and sound support to art installations conducted by the similarly state-maligned Twenty Moscow Artists on Malaya Gruzinskaya in the 1980s.

Advancing cross-genre fusions the composer dubbed "post-symphonic" and "post-pop," Chekalin's stylistic range included folk and musique concr�te-infused modern classical (it's no surprise Chekalin had a fan in Karlheinz Stockhausen); otherworldly post-industrial sound collage; gothic choral drift (with vocals provided by the composer); orchestral jazz-rock nodding to Frank Zappa, Charles Ives, zeuhl and Canterbury; quirky techno-adjacent dance music a la Kraftwerk; and surrealist organ/tape delay exercises which harkened back to Terry Riley and the dark essence of Klaus Schulze's first two albums. With his basement studio at his fingertips, Chekalin was a literal one-man orchestra who prided himself on manual performance without the use of sequencers or software, judiciously recording and editing his music with strictly analog equipment.

As glasnost took hold in the late 1980s and Chekalin was upgraded by the government to "tolerable," his music was finally put to record thanks to Melodiya, which released his first two full-length albums, 1988's Vocalise in Rapide and 1989's Post-Pop - Non-Pop (though he continued to keep his distance and refused to record in their studios), with a further twelve LPs issued in conjunction with the Modern Art Gallery ("M'Ars") in 1991. Thanks to the German label Erdenklang, Chekalin's music finally reached Western ears via two compilations: a 1992 collection of tracks from various Russian and Estonian artists, and the following year's Chekalin-centred Night Pulsation, which attracted praise from Alan Freeman and Frank Zappa (who died later in 1993 before the two got a chance to meet).

Chekalin garnered wider exposure in the mid 2000s thanks to a reissue campaign conducted by Archie Patterson's Eurock sublabel MIR Records (which dubbed him "Shostakovich for the electronica generation"), eventually earning the composer further accolades from Julian Cope and Oneohtrix Point Never (who sampled Chekalin on his 2017 single "The Rapture"). Despite an offer to resettle in Germany in the wake of Night Pulsation's success, Chekalin steadfastly remained in Moscow as the Soviet Union was liquidated, continuing his independent streak while finally breaking his hermeticism in the mid-1990s to work with jazz and chamber ensembles on and off, ceasing activity in 2019.

Similar artists in the archives include Peter Michael Hamel, Edward Artemiev, Igor Wakh�vitch, L�szl� Hortob�gyi, Sven Gr�nberg, Art Zoyd and Peter Frohmader.

- Gordy, June 2025read more

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MIKHAIL CHEKALIN Videos (YouTube and more)

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MIKHAIL CHEKALIN discography

Ordered by release date | Showing ratings (top albums) | Help Progarchives.com to complete the discography and add albums

MIKHAIL CHEKALIN top albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

2.00 \| 1 ratings Vocalise in Rapid 1988	2.00 \| 1 ratings Post-Pop - Non-Pop 1989	0.00 \| 0 ratings Meditative Music for the Decomposed �Electro-Organ� I 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Meditative Music for Prepared �Electricorgan� II 1991
0.00 \| 0 ratings Meditative Music for Prepared �Electricorgan� IIi 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Practical Music Making I 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Between Spring and Autumn by Stealth 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Practical Music Making II 1991
0.00 \| 0 ratings The Green Symphony 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Boarder State 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings The Symphony-Phonogram 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Introduction Into Intuition 1991
1.00 \| 1 ratings Concerto Grosso I 1991	1.00 \| 1 ratings Concerto Grosso II 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Album With a Symphony 1995	0.00 \| 0 ratings Ad Marginum 1996
0.00 \| 0 ratings Porcelain God 1997	0.00 \| 0 ratings Piano Variations 1998	0.00 \| 0 ratings Avoiding the Desire for Cutting and Piercing Objects 1999	0.00 \| 0 ratings Music for Film 2014
0.00 \| 0 ratings Requiem for Unofficial Moscow Artist / PostSymphony №12 2014	0.00 \| 0 ratings MonoOpera "What Is Po..?" 2014	0.00 \| 0 ratings Symphony # 13 2014	0.00 \| 0 ratings PostAmbientSymphony 2014

MIKHAIL CHEKALIN Live Albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

MIKHAIL CHEKALIN Videos (DVD, Blu-ray, VHS etc)

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Video History of Light & Sound Vol. 1
2009

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Video History of Light & Sound Vol. 2
2009

MIKHAIL CHEKALIN Boxset & Compilations (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

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Russian Mystery
1991

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Night Pulsation
1993

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Ecstatic Lullaby 1979-1987
2018

MIKHAIL CHEKALIN Official Singles, EPs, Fan Club & Promo (CD, EP/LP, MC, Digital Media Download)

MIKHAIL CHEKALIN Reviews

Showing last 10 reviews only

Thanks to gordy for the artist addition.

2.00 \| 1 ratings Vocalise in Rapid 1988	2.00 \| 1 ratings Post-Pop - Non-Pop 1989	0.00 \| 0 ratings Meditative Music for the Decomposed �Electro-Organ� I 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Meditative Music for Prepared �Electricorgan� II 1991
0.00 \| 0 ratings Meditative Music for Prepared �Electricorgan� IIi 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Practical Music Making I 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Between Spring and Autumn by Stealth 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Practical Music Making II 1991
0.00 \| 0 ratings The Green Symphony 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Boarder State 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings The Symphony-Phonogram 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Introduction Into Intuition 1991
1.00 \| 1 ratings Concerto Grosso I 1991	1.00 \| 1 ratings Concerto Grosso II 1991	0.00 \| 0 ratings Album With a Symphony 1995	0.00 \| 0 ratings Ad Marginum 1996
0.00 \| 0 ratings Porcelain God 1997	0.00 \| 0 ratings Piano Variations 1998	0.00 \| 0 ratings Avoiding the Desire for Cutting and Piercing Objects 1999	0.00 \| 0 ratings Music for Film 2014
0.00 \| 0 ratings Requiem for Unofficial Moscow Artist / PostSymphony №12 2014	0.00 \| 0 ratings MonoOpera "What Is Po..?" 2014	0.00 \| 0 ratings Symphony # 13 2014	0.00 \| 0 ratings PostAmbientSymphony 2014