El Lukijanov (*1983 in Bender/Tighina, today Transnistria) is a non-binary composer with Moldovan, Russian and Frisian roots. Lukijanov's works often refer to visual art, their own lyrical works, texts by other authors and philosophical works. They concerned with textures as well as processes of physical creation and invention - be it their own instruments, microtonal tunings, or ideas of digital and recursive environments. In 2021, Lukijanov had been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Artists' Residence Villa Concordia. El Lukijanov has had the opportunity to collaborate with renowned ensembles, performers and institutions, including accordionist Eva Zöllner, Ensemble TEMA, Ensemble Aventure, Klangforum Heidelberg, ZKM, Kunsthaus Bregenz and Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. As a self-taught instrument maker, Lukijanov built, among other things, a further development of the historical nail violin from the 19th century and worked out new playing techniques on it - layered into sound sculptures with a loop station or as raw single notes. They also developed and built the brass cello, with the motivation of realizing purely acoustic reverb effects on a low string and plucked instrument. Lukijanov won the 2018 DELTA Composition Prize of Klangforum Heidelberg and was a recipient of the Wolfgang Rihm Scholarship, sponsored by the Hoepfner Foundation. They also participated in master classes with Chaya Czernowin, Zeynep Gedizlioğlu and Rebecca Saunders, among others. El Lukijanov enjoyed the privilege of classical training on piano and violin at an early age. The unusual biography kept shaping Lukijanov's self-motivation, autodidacticism and inventiveness, so that in their resume, besides studying music technology and songwriting at a pop academy in Enschede, the Netherlands, there are other activities such as assisting various artists*, self-study in microtonality, writing poetry and secluded explorations of electronics and programming. El Lukijanov received private lessons from various professors and lecturers and only at the age of 32 accepted a place at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe with Prof. Wolfgang Rihm and Prof. Markus Hechtle. Recently, Lukijanov completed their composition recital with honors and, parallely they are in the completing their music informatics studies with Christoph Seibert. In 2021 El Lukijanov came out as genderfluid / non-binary and prefers the neutral pronoun they / them in English.