Larisa Migachyov was born in Russia and began her classical piano training at the age of 5. After immigrating to the United States, she quit music for many years until, by pure chance, she saw a flyer advertising the San Antonio Ragtime Society on a supermarket bulletin board. She attended one of the meetings and was instantly hooked. A year later, she composed her very first rag, the Purple Chicken Rag, and premiered it at the 2006 Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, Mo.
Larisa has composed more than 22 rags, mostly in a very traditional style, and mostly named after various types of food. Since that first performance at the 2006 Scott Joplin Festival, she has performed at many other ragtime festivals, and in fact, helped start a new festival in San Antonio. She has released two CDs, A Heap of Rags in 2007, and Oh, That Ragtime Chick! in 2009. The latter CD features 13 of her own compositions.
Larisa's "day jobs" have included mechanical engineering, design consulting, literary translation, and running a math tutoring agency. She recently graduated from law school, worked for a law firm in Palo Alto, Calif., and currently makes a living as a patent attorney in private practice.