Profile—Irina Riazanova
Irina Riazanova was born in Omsk, Russia. At age seven she was accepted to the specialized music school for gifted children and at age fourteen to the Shebalin Music High School with a major in choral conducting. In 1982 she was admitted to the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, which she completed in 1987; the Master of Music Degree was conferred ‘with honors’ in recognition of her direction of Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
Upon immigrating to the United States, Riazanova became a professional singer with the Rockefeller Chapel Choir at the University of Chicago. In 1992 she entered the doctoral program in conducting at Northwestern University and, having completed the dissertation on text and music relationships in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, received the Doctor of Music Degree. As a Graduate Assistant at Northwestern, her responsibilities included the direction of the University Women’s Chorus and serving as Assistant Director of the Graduate Chorale and Oratorio Society. This position gave her the opportunity to prepare and conduct in performance Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil with the Oratorio Society.
Riazanova has served on the faculty of Hope College in Holland, Michigan where she conducted Mozart’s Requiem with the College Chorus and Chapel Choir. She has also served as a style and diction coach at the May Festival in Cincinnati under James Conlon, at the Houston Grand Opera, and at the Chicago Lyric Opera under Sir Andrew Davis. Riazanova served as Choir Director at St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Chicago and at Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Passaic, New Jersey. Presently, she is teaching music to elementary school children in Lincolnwood, Illinois.
Riazanova is a citizen of the United States of America, married, and the mother of two children.