Murad Kajlayev

Murad Magomedovich Kajlayev (Мурад Магомедович Кажлаев; 15 January 1931 – 23 December 2023) was a Russian composer and conductor. He was a People's Artist of the USSR (1981), People's Artist of the Republic of Dagestan (2016), and laureate of international premiums and contests. He was also Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Great Academic Concert Orchestra named after Silantyev, a professor and academician at Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

Biography
Murad Kajlayev was born on 15 January 1931 in Baku to a Lak family. He graduated from Baku State Conservatoire from Boris Zeidman's composition class. He was expelled from there for his ardour for practicing non-academic musical genres but soon he was reclaimed. He worked as a teacher at a musical school named after Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, in Makhachkala, as a chief conductor of the Dagestan Radio Symphonic Orchestra (1957–1958), artistic director of the Dagestan Philharmonic Hall (1963–1964) and secretary of administration of the Union of Soviet Composers (from 1968). Kajlayev died on 23 December 2023, at the age of 92.