Vasily Zolotarev was born to a Greek family named Kuyumzhi (Куюмжи) or Kouyoumtzis in the city of Taganrog in 1872.
He studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under direction of Mily Balakirev (1893–1898) in the class of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1898–1900), graduating in 1900.
Zolotarev lectured at Moscow Conservatory (1909–1918), at the Belarus State Academy of Music (Белорусская государственная консерватория им.
The New York Times wrote of Zolotarev's Rhapsodie hébraïque that it was "based on Hebrew melodies now used in Russia... among the Jewish families of the lower classes.
... [Zolotarev] found that upon a Hebrew racial idiom there had been grafted some of the characteristic of Russian music just as the irreducible language of the Jews in any country is overlaid by a few words or modes of expression belonging to the land of their environment.