Evgeni Kostitsyn was born into the family of a general surgeon and a social worker in Eastern Ukraine, during the time of the former Soviet Union. He began studying music at the age of seven. At fourteen, he left home and family for Kharkiv, where he studied for five years at the Special Music School for Musically Gifted Children.

In 1988, as his master’s thesis at the Kharkiv Institute of Arts(class of Valentin Bibik), Kostitsyn composed and premiered his first symphony. Reception of the work was mixed, as some criticized the piece for notoriously requiring two conductors (considered at the time unprofessional). Ironically, Kostitsyn's poly-conductor music (including his third symphony, which requires nine conductors) was later canonized and is in use today as standard material for study at major Eastern European conservatories. The poly-conductor technique is now considered by some musicologists to be a logical extension of poly-tempo music.

From 1988-1991, Kostitsyn studied privately with composer Edison Denisov at the Moscow Conservatory of Music. The "Polystylism" of Alfred Schnittke, who Kostitsyn studied with in 1989, also had an impact on Kostitsyn’s style.

In 1993, Kostitsyn translated from German into Russian the first textbook on Dodecaphony which is currently used in many conservatories of Russia and CIS countries.

In 1998, his multimedia composition How I Made This, based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, won first place at The First Ukrainian International Competition for Composers, which was later renamed The Evgeni Kostitsyn International Competition for Composers.

The United States government invited Kostitsyn to live and work in America as part of the "Persons with Extraordinary Achievements and Abilities" initiative in 1999.

In 2000, he founded CDK Music record label in Boca Raton, Florida, which produces and licenses audio and video materials for worldwide distribution, specializing in Russian performers. Today, CDK Music controls rights for the largest outside of Russia catalogue of Russian produced recordings of classical music. Booklet notes authored by Evgeni Kostitsyn demonstrate a fresh look at music history.

In 2006 Kostitsyn Intellectual Properties was founded.

In 2008 Kostitsyn Films, a movie production company, was founded.

The focus of Kostitsyn's composition is his emergent technique "synchronous music," the simultaneous unfolding of multiple pieces of music. The technique leads to new artistic results, establishing a new tradition for the composition, performance and perception of music.

The interrelationship of different pieces is the basis for the organization of a synchronous work's overall form. Aspects of a work's form (such as introduction, exposition, development, climax, conclusion, and coda) are defined by the quantity and complexity of individual compositions being used. Each of the individual works that make up a piece of synchronous music possess their own forms, styles, tempi, timbres, and principles of development and are often performed by different ensembles or groups inside of an orchestra or choir.

A significant development resulting from Kostitsyn's synchronous technique is "musical cubism." Aspects of some of his music are direct assimilations of the painting technique of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. In Kostitsyn's cubist music, shapes are drawn by broken lines on a score and used to fill space as time unfolds. The shapes are identified by the presence or absence of sounds. The instruments performing a shape are organized from  low to high ranges vertically, so the duration of notes from each range delineates the shape (such as a circle - where middle-ranged pitches might be held for the longest time, while increasingly lower and higher pitches might sound for shorter periods relative to their places near the bottom and top of the circle).

Three basic shapes (rectangles, triangles, and circles) or their "elements" are represented by different musical material, tempos, dynamics and groups of instruments. Their symbolic meaning refers to the classical interpretation of the "three basic figures". Musical shapes interact and develop during the course of a composition according to the same principles of Kostitsyn's synchronisity.

As a pianist, Kostitsyn has performed at major venues, including the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Several of his compositions include piano - most notably, his piano sonatas and his 23 Preludes and Fugues for Piano, in which one musician performs several pieces of music simultaneously on one instrument. About this work, the composer said, "When Bach and Shostakovich wrote their cycles, the tradition was to write 24 sets (one for each key in the western tradition); I wrote 23 sets, because my music is polystylistic, so some parts are tonal while others are atonal or even pitchless. I did not write 25 sets, because I wanted to respect the other composers - not show them up."

Many of Kostitsyn's works are politically and socially charged. Evgeni Kostitsyn is the only composer in the world who put on music speeches by Presidents and politicians: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, John Kerry, Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush. Kostitsyn's Ring of Three American Requiems is a collection of "Masses for Democracy," in which American poets and speeches by American politicians past and present, including George W. Bush, are set to music in simultaneity with traditional Latin Requiem texts. The First Requiem is in direct response to the world trade center attacks of September 11, 2001. In one movement, the character Osama bin Laden sings from the Koran, "We fight for His cause and slay and are slain..." Kostitsyn decided to donate profits from sales of the Requiem to "aid Iraqi children."

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