If you trust the natural course of events more, then even failures can turn into good luck, singer Elena Kamburova is sure. She was lucky to meet sensitive people, to the love of the audience, and even to the prohibitions that helped her save herself.
Elena Kamburova, singer, actress, founder and director of the Theater of Music and Poetry. She works a lot in films, her voice sounds in the films “Slave of Love”, “Promised Heaven”, “Adventures of Electronics”.
She dreamed of getting into the Shchukin school, but was not accepted. After a year of work at a construction site, she entered the circus variety. I expected to master the artistic word, but became a singer. At the Mosconcert, Elena Kamburova was assigned to the department of the original genre, where magicians and jugglers worked, then to the department of satire and humor … Her first program was crushed at the artistic council and solo performances were not allowed. Time after time, party leaders reproached her for having “the wrong repertoire”, “the wrong songs.” But she did not betray herself, she found her audience, founded a theater, one of a kind …
Psychologies: Do you consider yourself lucky in life?
Elena Kamburova: Yes, I’ve had a lot of luck. Not even that: everything in my life is, in fact, a happy coincidence. But not everything that happened to me could be immediately understood and accepted as good luck. And now, looking back, I understand that everything turned out the way it probably should have turned out. For example, I dreamed of becoming an actress and almost entered Shchukinskoye, but did not pass the third round. Failure? Certainly. But if I had passed, I would have entered the course that later became Taganka. And then I would not have become what I have become. And probably, I simply would not have survived there … After the failure, it was very difficult, but I did not leave Moscow for home in Khmelnitsky. The following year, I entered the circus school, the pop department, which seemed to open especially for me. I was noticed by director Sergei Kashtelyan, who taught there. Of course, it was luck, because I could come and go unnoticed. Then, thanks to the composer Kirill Akimov, I got on the radio – I would never have dared to go there myself.
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It turns out that you were lucky to meet, to mentors?
E.K .: As I now understand, at the right time, important people rained down on me like from a cornucopia. For example, some time later, Faina Ranevskaya heard my student work on Gorky’s Nuncha on the radio. And she wrote an enthusiastic letter to the editors of Yunost. This not only supported me, but also became the starting point of our acquaintance and friendship, which is very dear to me. At the first meeting, Faina Georgievna said: “Baby, it’s good that you are not a fifa. You have the same flaw as I have … No, not a nose, modesty. Or at the school I met and began to work with the composer and accompanist Larisa Kritskaya. She wrote a lot of music especially for me, she was always open to new genres and experiments. But I could meet other accompanists who would perceive me as a white crow, an ugly duckling … I was also lucky with the authors: Bulat Okudzhava, Yuly Kim, Yuri Levitansky, Mikael Tariverdiev, Vladimir Dashkevich. They already had a huge number of amazing poems and songs.
How did your Theater of Music and Poetry appear?
E.K .: Also a coincidence. In the early 90s, returning from a trip to Germany for the Days of Russian Culture, I found myself in the same compartment with their organizer – Lev Shemaev, a very active person from Boris Yeltsin’s team. Alexander Gradsky, who was also traveling with us, at some point in the conversation mentioned that he wanted his own theater. And I suddenly said that I also really want to. “You will be in the theater,” Shemaev promised easily. Soon a meeting of the creative intelligentsia with Yuri Luzhkov took place. I was sitting and listening to my colleagues speak, and suddenly Shemaev, who happened to be nearby, literally pushed me to the microphone: “Go, you should also say, come on, faster!” In me, fortunately, there is an important quality – in an extreme situation, I can do much more than I can do at all. I came out and said that there should be a theater in Moscow, which has not yet been in Russia, and that I believe that it will be. The next day I was quoted in the newspaper, and a day later I was summoned to see Luzhkov. And everything worked out. We were given a room. Lucky? Certainly. But you have to be prepared for luck.
Failure builds muscles, you have to fight, do not lose heart, and they will turn into good luck
What does this mean?
E.K .: The room is not a theatre. I wanted it to be, but I didn’t really know how to arrange it. I dreamed that there would be evenings of poetic and acting songs, readings, solo performances, compositions, guests. I understood well that there are people for whom such a theater would be a salvation. After some time, we really began to spend evenings, more or less successful, but all this could not be called a full-fledged theater. In general, it is always a mystery – how does a theatrical bacillus start? How suddenly a new life begins to grow? .. It all started with a musical idea – to make arrangements of songs by Schubert and Schumann for a vocal ensemble and several instruments. It is curious that it came to the mind of a man who was against the creation of the theater, a pianist, composer, my long-term stage partner Oleg Sinkin. And the first performance was staged by Pyotr Fomenko’s student Ivan Popovski, a Macedonian director with poetic thinking, who sees poetry in music and can find bright plastic means of expressing it. This trinity: music, poetry and their theatrical living – determined the genre of theater. Then our performances received festival awards, were noted by critics, and a year ago I even received the Stanislavsky Prize for creating a theater.
But after all this success cannot be explained only by luck?
E.K .: Undoubtedly. Luck has fallen, and what’s next? In the case of the theatre, there were several more years of drudgery. We live in a country where there are always a lot of papers that are very slowly transferred from one folder to another. We still have problems with repairs. But failures build muscles, you have to fight to turn them into success. Work hard and don’t give up, don’t lose heart. To be a kind of “roly-poly”.
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It could happen that you would immediately become famous, become famous …
E.K .: Nothing good would come of it, I’m sure. At first, I simply would not have had enough physical strength: after graduating from college, I was not ready for either solo concerts or foreign tours. I didn’t know much yet, I had a small vocal range, which gradually began to expand thanks to new songs. They demanded new colors from me, and unexpectedly for me, new timbres, sounds began to appear in my voice … All this happened slowly, gradually. And it’s good that I then had the time and opportunity to thoughtfully and gradually recruit a repertoire, make my own programs, and look for my audience. Besides, great fame implies big halls, and I’m not sure that they would be filled with people who are able to perceive songs based on poetry.
Today, many believe that our task is to calculate our path many steps forward, to create our own future, not to miss a single chance …
E.K .: I think that the one who approaches luck without calculation, does not expect it for granted, feels it much more emotionally. Luck inspires, and unexpected luck – especially. You can’t dwell on your failures, just as you can’t stubbornly pretend that everything is fine. We need a balance – we need to believe in luck, clearly understand the circumstances in which we live, and work hard.
How do you manage to deal with difficulties so calmly?
E.K .: What are you, I’m very upset! And it’s been with me since childhood. At school we had a class of mourners. We cried for every reason. And now I worry a lot. Sometimes I listen to a recording of my performance and get upset – after all, it could have been better. But I have a saving curiosity: I listen, peer, and even try to extract something useful from the bad. I remember well how one day (once again!) they smashed my program, forbade me to perform, because non-Soviet songs, no civic position, “the wrong intonation.” And I grabbed that word. They told me a great thing: the most important thing in what I do is intonation.
What do you think leads you to success?
E.K .: intuition and patience. Perseverance, quiet stubbornness, which is not visible from the outside. And since childhood, I was sure that I would become an artist. Where did this come from, if I was afraid of the audience, could neither sing nor read in public? But, apparently, I planted some “grains” in my childhood. The great phrase “Hope dies last” is very close to me. And I often repeat to myself: “It’s not evening yet.”
“I chose business and have not regretted it”
Mikhail, 48, top manager
“I have been making music since I was 10 years old. Played the oboe. At the school he was the best among the brass, after graduating from the Academy. Gnesinykh made serious progress, worked in large groups, with great musicians. Career lined up quite well. In 1995, a friend, a Bolshoi Theater soloist, called me and invited me to join his orchestra. I soared! Big – the apotheosis of a musician’s career! Dream. But literally an hour and a half later, another call came in: from a businessman friend who also gathered his team and invited me to try himself in a new capacity. I agreed and still consider this choice a great success. My colleagues, who are still continuing the path of a musician, have long become honored artists. What they have achieved is a huge success, but any career move for a musician who has reached the highest level is only possible horizontally. But it turned out differently for me: I grew all the time, and grew quite seriously. I graduated from MBA, learned English, studied marketing, PR, learned to make non-standard decisions, realizing that everything depends only on me – either failure or success.
But on that “fatal” day, I just wanted to try. I was interested, and I decided to work for a month or two, to understand whether it works or not. The first two months were absolutely crazy. I did not understand anything, did not know anything, I had to learn everything on the go … Very soon I began to show results that satisfied the owner. And he couldn’t stop. Then I “burned bridges”: I sold my instrument. It became completely clear to me that my musical career was over forever.