Leonid Desyatnikov is one of the most widely performed contemporary Russian composers. His music can be often heard at major music festivals: Lockenhouse (Austria, 1996, 1998), Gstaad (Switzerland, 1997), December Nights of Sviatoslav Richter (1997), and others.
Leonid Desyatnikov was born in the city of Kharkov, Ukraine on October 16, 1955. After finishing a music school under the Kharkiv Institute of Arts in 1978 he entered the Composition Faculty of the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory.
Since 1973 he has been living in St. Petersburg.
As a 3rd year student Leonid Desyatnikov composed his first opera, Poor Liza. In 1980 the opera director Yuri Borisov staged it at the Boris Pokrovsky Moscow Chamber Music Theater.
In 1978 he graduated from the Conservatory and was admitted to the Composers Union of Russia in 1979.
Leonid Desyatnikov's creativity is famous for quite a number of works, including the opera Children of Rosenthal, the chamber opera Poor Liza, the ballets Lost Illusions, The Opera, and A Love Song in a Minor Key, the cantatas Night Songs and The Gift, the vocal cycle Love and Life of the Poet set to poems by Daniil Kharms and Nikolay Oleynikov, the symphony for chorus, soloists and orchestra The Rite of Winter 1949, and others.
From 1996 Leonid Desyatnikov actively cooperated with Gidon Kremer as the composer (Wie der Alte Leiermann ..., a chamber version of  Sketches for Sunset, and Russian Seasons) and arranger of works by Astor Piazzolla. In 1996-1998 he made a free transcription of the Four Seasons of Buenos Aires by Piazzolla for violin and string orchestra. In every part of this cycle, he included a few quotes from The Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi.
Leonid Desyatnikov is also known as the author of music to popular feature films: The Sunset, The Touch, Lost in Siberia, Moscow Nights, Hammer and Sickle, His Wife's Diary, Moscow (Grand Prix for best soundtrack at the Bonn Film and Media Music Festival, 2000), Captive, The Target (the National Film Award Nika 2011 in the category Best Film Music).
The composer defines his own style as "the emancipation of consonance, transformation of the banal, minimalism with a human face" and his favorite genre as "a tragically playful thing".
For a number of years Leonid Desyatnikov actively collaborated with the Alexandrinsky Theater. From 2009 to 2010 he worked as the music director of the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia.