Nina Shatskaya

Nina Arkadyevna Shatskaya (Нина Аркадьевна Шацкая, April 22, 1966, Rybinsk, USSR) is a Russian singer and actress, best known for her jazzy take on the Russian romance heritage.

Staying out of the spotlight, Shatskaya is held in high regard by critics and colleagues.

According to composer Nikita Bogoslovsky, "Next to our pop 'legends' she is a true queen: lonely and untouchable."

In 1986 the family suffered a heavy blow.

At the height of the Mikhail Gorbachev-induced 'economic crimes fighting' campaign Arkady Shatsky was arrested and sentenced to five years of hard labour for alleged financial wrongdoings.

Shatsky never denied the fact that he had to use all of his entrepreneurial abilities to provide the band with the best equipment and modern instruments (like synthesizers), in the times when such items had to be 'procured' at black markets rather than legally bought.

"He simply disappeared. My mother and I couldn't find out where they'd taken him. Mother was continuously insulted [at work], and then got fired. Many 'prominent' Rybinsk men who'd always been proud to have us as friends were now avoiding us... Our flat was searched and turned upside down: they hoped to find a large sum of hidden money, apparently, but only found the huge vinyl record collection which was my father's one and only item of luxury."

Arkady Shatsky returned home six months later after being amnestied, but the once internationally famous Raduga orchestra was now finished.

"I realized that from then on I had to make my own decisions. The firm parental wall that had propped me up all of a sudden was in ruins," Nina remembered.

In 1999 Nina Shatskaya went to the US with a view of recording her Russian romances.

"Investors hoped that there would be some kind of a romance revival. They wanted to make a high-budget product involving the leading Russian poets and composers. But producer Maksim Dunayevsky decided to make it a pop record and since I've never been keen on pop music, the project flopped," she later explained.

The recorded material was taken back to Russia but remained unreleased.

"I was well aware that the material we recorded was primitive and had nothing whatsoever to do with what I'd been dreaming of. I felt like I'd been given one chance and squandered it," she later admitted.

She spent in America six months and spoke warmly of her vocal coach Seth Riggs.

"When I first came to him, he was jovially dismissive of the Russian vocal school. Having heard me he was impressed and said I had brilliant technique, for which I have to thank Natalya Andrianova," the singer recalled.

Shatskaya's repertoire changed after she met Zlata Razdolina, a Saint Petersburg composer experimenting with the modern Russian romance genre.

The immediate result of this collaboration was the musical version of Anna Akhmatova's Requiem, sung by Shatskaya and backed by the State Cinema Orchestra.

Razdolina and Shatskaya soon parted ways, but years later they met again for another Akhmathova-themed project.

Shatskaya's debut album The Game of Love (2000, part of The Golden Mine of Romance series) later provided the title for an expansive concert project with the Russian Orchestra, directed by Boris Voron.

In the mid-2000s she started to perform at elitist events like The second Moscow Ball in Vienna, Russian Seasons in Kitzbühel, series of concerts at the Russian embassy in Finland, Russian film festivals (Zerkalo, European Window and Amur Autumn, among others).

By this time she was collaborating with some well-established ensembles, including the State Symphony Cinema Orchestra (conducted by Sergei Skripka), the Moscow Symphony Orchestra (Vladimir Ziva), the Russian Presidential Orchestra, and the Karlovy Vary Orchestra.

It was followed by The Lady of Romance (2002) which brought Shatskaya to the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall for the first time.

Arkady Shatsky, who attended the rehearsal, remarked: "At last my dream has come true. Now you are the woman I've always dreamt you'd become."

Just several days after arriving to Rybinsk so as to promote Nina's concerts there, he died, aged 66.

On November 4, 2002, still mourning her father's death, Shatskaya triumphantly performed at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, singing songs from the Music of Love set (Russian romances in part one, American song classics and movie standards in part two).

Shatskaya released seven well-received albums and was designated a Meritorious Artist of Russia in 2004.

Nina Arkadyevna Shatskaya was born in Rybinsk to the jazz musician, singer and conductor Arkady Shatsky.

It was in his band Raduga (Радуга, Rainbow) that she has made her singing debut.

A strict disciplinarian (who for many years was unwilling to support her ambition to become a professional singer), he proved in retrospect to be a perfect mentor and a major inspiration.

"I was kind of a homely girl; I liked to knit and sew. Besides, I was overweight. All this irritated him immensely: he was sure this way I'd turn out fat, lazy and stupid. He criticized me mercilessly but somehow managed to help me shape up with this criticism. I was eager to prove I was worthy of his praise," she later remembered.

After graduating school Nina couldn't decide which college to go to, so Arkady Shatsky sent her to a settlement near an agricultural factory to work there for a year as a club administrator.

"That was where I learned what the word 'rural cultural life' meant. I tried hard to get some Indian films for our workers, painted billboards and organized parties," she later remembered.

A year later Nina moved to Leningrad and enrolled in the Management faculty at the Humanitarian University.

Later she attended the Music Hall Studio School, graduating from both.

In Leningrad she felt uncomfortable and lonely.

"While my girl friends were busy courting men, I spent all my evenings in the Conservatory or the Philharmonics," she said in an interview.

Yet Shatskaya recalled fondly her years at the Leningrad Music Hall.

"The teachers there were fantastic, and the performers were all individuals, each cultivating their own manner," she reminisced.

She moved to the Moscow Music Hall and studied vocals at Gnesyn Academy, in the class of Natalya Andrianova, while also making miscellaneous recordings with orchestras for Soviet TV and radio.

In 2004 Shatskaya premiered her From Romance to Jazz concert program at the Svetlanov Hall of the Moscow House of Music.