Composer, Conductor. He is best known for his stage music, which blended a robust Russian spirit with the delicacy of French Impressionism. His ballet "Le Pavillion d'Armide" (1907) was the first ever staged by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1909. The son of a prominent physician, Tcherepnin was born in St. Petersburg and studied with Rimsky-Korsakov at the Conservatory there. He gained initial notoriety for his colorful orchestral pieces "Prelude por la Princesse Lointaine" (1898) and "Le Royaume Enchante" (1904). As a conductor at St. Petersburg's Maryinsky Theatre from 1898, he worked frequently with famed designer Alexander Benois; their collaboration on "Le Pavillion d'Armide", with Anna Pavlova and Vaclav Nijinsky in the cast, helped inspire Diaghilev's idea to present dance works in Paris. Tcherepnin was involved with the Ballets Russes from its inception, serving as co-music director from 1909 to 1911 and writing the ballet "Narcisse" (1911) for Nijinsky. During this time he commuted between Paris and St. Petersburg, where he had been named professor of composition at the Conservatory in 1908. His star pupil was Sergei Prokofiev, who dedicated his Piano Concerto No. 1 (1910) to him. His last great success was the dance drama on Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" (1916), premiered at the Maryinsky. With the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution Tcherepnin fled to Tbilisi in Georgia, and settled in Paris in 1921. There he was appointed head of the Russian Conservatory of Music and renewed his association with Diaghilev, though he never recaptured his pre-World War I fame. He was guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for its 1932 season. His later works include the ballets "Dionysus" (1922), "Russian Fairy Tale" (1923), and "Romance of the Mummy" (1924), the operas "Svat" (1930) and "Vanka" (1933), and the oratorio "The Descent of the Holy Virgin into Hell" (1937). He also completed Mussorgsky's fragmentary opera "Sorochinsky Fair" in 1924. His son was composer-pianist Alexander Tcherepnin.