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Anton Mikhailov

Composer | Pianist

About Me

Anton Mikhailov is a composer, pianist, arranger, and educator whose work spans contemporary jazz, film scoring, media music, and game soundtracks. His versatile career also includes projects in pop, R&B, and soul, as well as original arrangements and productions across genres.

Born in Horlivka, Ukraine, Mikhailov studied classical piano for seven years at a local music school before entering the Murmansk College of Arts. After three years in the academic department, he transferred to the jazz division, where he deepened his understanding of improvisation and contemporary styles. Following his studies, he moved to Moscow, where he engaged in a wide range of musical activities, including jazz and crossover projects.

As a performer and producer, he has collaborated on a variety of releases: he appeared as a keyboardist on Konstantin Ivanov’s single Mood (featuring drummer Ignat Kravtsov), and produced and composed music for the hip-hop-jazz album UnderMосковье by the group опер100. His work also includes several neo-soul arrangements, pop compositions, and original soundtracks—for the video game Atomic Heart, the docu-drama series Anna Karenina’s Mysteries, and the sci-fi television series Radar.

In 2022, Mikhailov relocated from Moscow to Tbilisi, Georgia, where he recorded his debut jazz album at Leno Records. The project brought together drummer Roman Reznik (Zemfira, The Retuses, among others) and bassist Ivan Lipatov, under the guidance of engineers Ilya Mazaev (known for collaborations with Vadim Eilenkrig, Anton Baronin, Igor Yakovenko) and Grammy-winning New York engineer Dave Darlington, who mixed and mastered the album.

As both a performer and composer, Mikhailov is drawn to the freedom and experimentation of jazz—the capacity to express radical emotion, dramatic intensity, and bold contrasts. His music reflects this philosophy, weaving together the rigor of classical training, the immediacy of improvisation, and the emotional storytelling of modern jazz.

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My Jazz Story

I first became interested in jazz around my second or third year of college. Until then, I had been deeply immersed in academic classical music, and jazz appeared to me as something different—an open and intriguing world that invited me to explore it both emotionally and theoretically. At the beginning, I didn’t necessarily find it “more interesting” than classical music, but it was something other, something new, and that was enough to draw me in. Naturally, I started with quite complex music—perhaps because my background had already been in equally complex classical repertoire. What captivated me right away was the freedom. Jazz allows an enormous amount of freedom and experimentation—both within and beyond the boundaries of any given style or genre. And, of course, its improvisational nature. Many genres include improvisation, but in jazz there is a unique thrill in balancing respect for the chosen style with the freedom to create something completely new in the moment. My first real exposure to jazz actually happened earlier, back in music school. Despite the fact that my parents are musicians, jazz wasn’t a big part of my early environment—apart from hearing Ray Charles, who isn’t strictly jazz. In school, I was introduced to lighter pieces by Ukrainian or Soviet composers written in an “estrada-jazz” style, fairly simple at first. Later, I discovered the jazz preludes of Nikolai Kapustin, a Ukrainian composer, and I was struck by their rhythmic variety, originality, and sheer difficulty. They left a strong impression on me. The first jazz album I listened to attentively was Accelerando by Vijay Iyer, which opened up a whole new sound world for me. Later, I discovered Tigran Hamasyan’s Mockroot, which deepened my connection to contemporary jazz and sparked an ongoing fascination with the modern scene. To this day, I love jazz for the very same reasons that first attracted me: its freedom, its endless possibilities, and the way it combines structure and spontaneity into something always alive, always surprising.