Anna Nemzer. Concert 10

Whitney

began creative career Whitney Houston's quite traditionally: the girl sang in a church choir; hymns and psalms - at the Baptist Church in East Orange, New Jersey. Houston's mother and cousin were both famous gospel singers, so Whitney's musical career seemed set in stone from an early age. However, there are many temptations in the world, and Houston returned to her vocal career after going through a long period of work in the modeling business. In 1992, in the film “The Bodyguard,” she played the role of Rachel Marron and, shining with moist eyes, soulfully promised Kevin Costner: “I Will Always Love You.” After that, there could be no talk of any modeling business: Houston had to sing. More than ten years have passed since then, her voice has become a little more insinuating, her phrasing now seems honed and as if covered with a varnish of impeccability. Houston's face increasingly began to attract the attention of the paparazzi, and her name appeared on magazine pages. She comes to Moscow and, of course, will sing songs from her repertoire of recent years. But she still won’t be able to do without the main hit: Houston will once again remember the determined bodyguard Frank Farmer, who so easily and naturally saved her from bandits in 1992 to the spicy melodies of David Foster. February 10, 11, Kremlin Palace of Congresses.

Kashin

We learned about Pavel Kashin more than ten years ago. The fair-haired young man, plucking the guitar strings with almost Claptonian agility, looked unusual on our stage, and therefore advantageous. Kashin was passionately loved by humanitarian-minded boys and girls: his texts depicted a strange and alluring little world, cozy Victorian decadence, a kind of little homely fin de siecle. The meaning of the texts was often hidden in the fog, but the aestheticization of the tiny space on “my cozy table” had its own charm. The harmonic solutions, more complex than is customary in pop practice, and the quiet guitar plucks were memorable from the very first listen. Kashin released albums not too often, but regularly, forcing fans to reflect on his predecessors, fiercely argue about the “Vertin” tradition, recall Wilde for something, and fervently reject all these theories, asserting Kashin’s complete originality. This week Kashin is in “The Chinese Pilot”; he is an unusual guest there, and some unexpected genre is promised, reviving memories of apartment dwellers: Kashin, they say, will first sing unknown songs with an acoustic guitar, and then answer questions from the public. February 11, "Chinese pilot Zhao Da."

Gendos

With some delay - compared to the West - we listen to ethnic music. We recognize the half-Australian-half-Udmurt vocalist Zulya Kamalova, the fantastic Tuvan group Huun-Khuur-Tu, the student of the Tashkent Conservatory Sevara Nazarkhan and many other residents of the former Soviet republics after Peter Gabriel’s famous label Realworld begins to promote them. Now we get to hear Gennady Chamzyrin, in the music world he is better known as Gendos. He is a hereditary shaman from Tuva; he masters the art of throat singing and has been playing a variety of instruments all his life (the Moscow public is already sophisticated and is slowly remembering the names: chadagan - Tuvan harp, tambur and dutar - lute-shaped instruments, toshpulur - something like a balalaika). At the concert, Gendos will be accompanied by Sergei Starostin, an excellent vocalist, ethnographer, and connoisseur of folk music. Starostin sang with everyone - with a Bulgarian female quartet, with Senegalese vocalist Mola Silla, with double bassist Vladimir Volkov - it’s impossible to list them all. This week he will sing with a real shaman Gendos, who, they say, once served in the army in the Urals and even managed to organize his own ensemble there. February 15, cultural center DOM.