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Russian guitarist Alina Yudaeva from a anecdote to a Christmas tale

June 17, 2019
Alina Yudaeva is guitarist and composer from Moscow, a one-man project, DIY-artist. She also plays bass guitar, ukulele, a little bit on drums, percussion and piano, composes music, makes arrangements, and then records it all and listens. She was born in 1971 on Valentine's Day. In Russia of that time, this day was not yet celebrated as the Valentine's Day, therefore it was just February fourteenth, rather damp and cold winter Sunday. She started music almost immediately after birth, or rather her mother thought that she was engaged in musical development of the child, and in fact Alina, due to kindness and gentleness of character, made her company in her games.
Dear, clap such a rhythm, - and Alina clapped. It was not difficult for her. - Baby, sing such a song, - and Alina sang to make her mother nice.
The games stopped when Alina discovered the metallophone and the “Piano playing school”, edited by A. Nikolayev, at the age of five. It was that time when she began a serious study of the theory, and further mastering piano. It should be noticed that since childhood Alina dreamed of playing guitar. Where the desire came from, she doesn’t remember. There are two main versions. First, handsome men with guitars in the New Year's “Blue Light”(“Goluboy Ogonyok”) TV program attracted attention, and secondly, the heroine sang a cheerful song with a guitar in the TV version of the Satire theater performance “Wake up and sing”. This fragment also sunk into Alina’s soul.
Guitar hobby was not supported at home at all, for some reason it was believed that in this way the child demonstrated boyish and hooligan habits. It was believed that only bad guys from bad areas could play guitar, and girls should play either violin or piano. Therefore, Alina had to continue piano lessons. But at the age of 16 her patience snapped, and she finally gave herself to guitar. And since then, although she changes it with bass, now with percussion, drums, and keyboard instruments, she still returns to it. But guitar is not offended and always gladly takes her back. At the end of 1990, Alina composed a couple of tunes and realized that now there is only one way of life - to become a rock star. But it seemed impossible to do it without a new black guitar strap and her band. The guitar strap was found in the nearest music store, the band was assembled from the closest friends. Thus, in February 1991, a band appeared in Moscow ... just a band. The band name was found in the summer: vocalist Aleksey Sharovatov brought the book “The Memoirs of Moominpappa” of the Finnish writer Tove Jansson, and there was a romantic phrase “Sea Orchestra”(“Morskoy Orkestr”), which seemed appropriate to the mood of the current band members. From the very beginning, they set a course to perform their own music in their own style, close to rhythm and blues and rock and roll.  But even at the beginning of the 2000s, the idea to create own instrumental project was ripening. And in 2007 Alina recorded the first solo work - the instrumental opera “Hedgehog, who bring the glue!” based on the famous Russian anecdote. In the first albums the guitar sound prevailed and the overall style was also close to rhythm and blues and blues rock. Gradually, with the passage of time and as confidence grew, elements of progressive rock and psychedelic rock close to “Pink Floyd”, “The Velvet Underground”, “The Jimi Hendrix Experience” and “Yes” began to appear in the music. Many critics also note that Alina’s music is undoubtedly influenced by contemporary Russian composers, such as Leonid Desyatnikov, Eduard Artemyev, Sergey Kuryokhin, Aleksey Aygi. Nevertheless, time passes, and more and more colors appear in the music. Now more and more accents are shifted towards indie electronics, minimal electronics and indie rock.
Alina names her current style “household avant-garde” or “household minimalism”. This is music in which household items and environmental sounds are used as drums, percussion, and often as solo instruments. This can be especially clearly heard in the track “Scorpios are watching the mowing of winter crops produced by polar reindeer herders in the autumn of 2010 (fantastic unokvaziya for piano, guitar and household items)” from the 2013 album “Kigrokyeko”. And also almost completely in the 2016 album “Following the Full Moon” and in particular, in the track “Lift song”, where you can hear the creak of an ordinary elevator with autotune as a solo part. Summing up, we can say that from the first works to the present day the discography has grown to ten releases, including the recent single "Christmas Tale", and in the 2019 summer a full album is expected, in which acoustic guitar compositions and experimental tracks will be next to electronic tracks. Concert activity should be mentioned separately. The fact is that today studio recordings and live performances are two completely different things. Concert variant is chamber, acoustic, more improvisational and psychedelic. Less instruments are involved in concerts, from a duet of two guitars to a quartet, which includes electric guitar, classical guitar, piano, and percussion. In this distinction of studio and concert versions there are both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages include the fact that an unprepared audience, having heard the recording, will expect it to be played on a live performance and may be disappointed without getting it. And the advantage is that real fans get two projects, live and studio, instead of one. Currently, in addition to the solo project, Alina collaborates with the poet Pavel Karachin and is half of the duet KAENDA, which she created together with the Moscow poet Konstantin Markelov and in which she is responsible for the entire musical part.

She was featured in recently released Lifoti's June 2019 influencer issue, you can check it from below link's for your country:

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