Edward Kalendar (Eduard Kalandarov), 1941-2022, was an Uzbek-American composer of Jewish descent. Audiences around the world knew him as a musician of immense versatility and skill: a charismatic, passionate performer, prolific composer, and a formidable jazz pianist. Kalendar’s ability to move effortlessly between the classical, jazz, pop and folk music genres as well as his remarkable talent for fusing ethnic musical elements with jazz harmonies made him a truly unique figure in the music world.
Kalendar was one of the underground jazz pioneers of Soviet Central Asia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As jazz gradually became more tolerated by the government, Mr. Kalendar proceeded to introduce the genre to the public through his inspired teaching and performances at newly organized jazz festivals.
Kalendar’s creative output includes twenty-six film scores; concertos for cello and piano; a violin sonata; a symphonic poem for orchestra; a string quartet; dramatic music for classical theater; children’s and professional choral pieces and over two hundred classical, popular, and children’s songs. Kalendar’s original compositions were released on Melodia Records, and his sheet music arrangements of Jewish songs from around the globe are distributed worldwide by J.W. Pepper and Schott Music.
