Yevgeny Poplavsky was born on September 20, 1959 in the town of Porazov, Grodno region. He graduated from the Belarussian State Conservatory (now the Belarussian State Academy of Music) in the class of Igapa Luchan and Dmitry Smolsky in 1986. He trained under the guidance of Sergei Slonimsky at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he participated in the master classes of Ton de Leuw. In 1991, at his initiative, the International Festival of Contemporary Chamber Music was organized in Minsk every two years until 1995.
From 1997 to 1999, he received a scholarship from the Polish government, which gave him the opportunity to work in Gdansk at the Stanislaw Małuszki Academy of Music on a work for the Barbara Radziwill Symphony Orchestra and at the Academy of Music in Krakow on his own creative project. Participated in Acanthe 2000 / Ircam summer courses.
At the National Composers Contest, dedicated to the 500th anniversary of Francisco Skorina (1991), he received the II prize for the symphony “Lux aeterna” for tenor, chorus and symphony orchestra in the words of Leon Emilito. Its premiere took place on March 21, 1997 during the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of Gdansk (Baltic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, choirs of the Academy of Music and Gdansk University, tenor – Petr Kusevich, hole director – Zygmunt Richart). In January 2000, at the Jihlava-2000 International Composers Competition in Prague, his choral cycle “The Late Fall Weather”, in the words of Leopold Staff, received the II Award in the nomination “Works for Chamber Choir”. The premiere of the cycle took place in 2002 at the 45th Prague International Choral Music Festival (Krakow Chamber Choir, conductor – Monica Bachowska).
In 2002, commissioned by the Polish Radio Experimental Studio in Warsaw, they wrote the Path to Cloud II for the oboe, percussion instruments and computer. The work was performed at the electroacoustic studio of the Krakow Music Academy. The premiere was held at the International Native Festival “14. Days of Music by Krakow Composers ”(Mariusz Pendylak – oboe, Jan Pilch – percussion instruments, Mathewus Ben – sound projection). In May 2004, this work represented the Polish Radio Experimental Studio on the international platform of UNESCO electro-acoustic music in Rome (IREM 2004).
At the request of the Warsaw International Autumn Festival of Contemporary Music, works for the instrumental ensemble “Light on the Road” (2000) and “May – Her” (2005) were written, performed by the ensemble of soloists “Classic Vanguard” under the direction of Vladimir Baidov.
In 2013, at the request of the Krakow Branch of the Union of Composers of Poland under the Zamówienia kompozytorskie 2013 program, which was done through Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, a cycle “Pozni” was written for mixed choir unaccompanied by the words of Uladzimir Zhylka and Larissa Heniyush. The premiere of the cycle took place on December 15, 2013 during the composer’s concert in Krakow (vocal ensemble SINGET, conductor – Maria Januszkiewicz). Eight more composer concerts have been successfully performed in Minsk (2011, 2015,2016,2017,2019), Krakow (2015, 2017) and Poznan (2017).
His works have been performed at international contemporary music festivals in Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Denmark, the USA, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. His work is embodied in eight monographic CDs.
Eugene Poplavsky is actively interested in the history of music life in Belapyci. He was one of the founders and director (until 1996) of the National Theater and Concert Union “Belarusian Capella”, created in 1992, the purpose of which is to search, study and introduce to the practice of ancient Belarusian music. Eugene Poplowski’s work in the archives of the libraries of London, Krakow, Warsaw, Poznan, Gdansk and St. Petersburg has been fruitful. The materials found formed the basis of the repertoire of the annual wave festival “Revival of the Belarusian Chapel”. He is also the author of the script of the ballet Theogony, based on the book of the same name by Hesiod (VIII century BC), which restored the principles of the Nesvizh theater, founded in 1740 by Ursula Radziwill (1705–1753). According to his dramatic idea, the ballet “Polonaise” was staged in 1995 by the music of Mixal Cleofas Oginsky (1765-1833). In 2008, Eugene Poplowski, together with the Russian National Library and the Polish Institute in St. Petersburg, founded a series of musical editions, “The Musical Recession of the Commonwealth of the Commonwealth of the Russian National Library.” The world has already seen 12 notebooks of the series.
The 2013 electronic edition features 2 DVDs dedicated to one of the most unique creators of the 19th century. To Joseph Ignatius Krashev Skama (1812–1887), the section “Musical Art” consists of the materials found and researched by Ya. Poplavsky. The publication was prepared within the framework of the International Project with the support of the National Commission of the Republic of Belarus for UNESCO.
Member of the Union of Composers of Belarus (1989) and the Union of Polish Composers (2011).