Kara Karayev was born on this day - VIDEO
In 1937, Karayev joined the Union of Composers of the Azerbaijan SSR.
In 1938 Karayev moved to the Moscow State Conservatoire, where he became a student of Anatoly Alexandrov, Sergei Vasilenko and Dmitri Shostakovich.
The composer was a laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (1946, the opera `Motherland`, 1948, the symphonic poem `Leyli and Majnun`), the State Prize of Azerbaijan SSR (1965) and the Lenin Prize (1967, the ballet `Path of Thunder`).