Mikhail Shcherbakov:
Mikhail Scherbakov was born in 1963 and began writing and performing songs in 1979, shortly before starting his philology studies at Moscow State University. Now he lives in Moscow and is recognized as one of the best Russian songwriters and poets of the new generation.
He has written over 400 songs, recorded 25 CD albums (including compilations) and cassette tape compilations. His popularity has been steadily growing, especially among young and educated people, college students, and intelligentsia. According to some, he is destined to become the most famous artist of his generation in Russia.
His guitar-accompanied songs, sometimes accented by a keyboard background, are short philosophical essays on love and death, friendship and loneliness, art, freedom, history and future, put into a beautiful poetic and musical form. The sophisticated world of his imagination is often compared to that of Vladimir Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges. His poetic style inherits some of the best discoveries of Joseph Brodsky; in music, he continues and extends the honored traditions of contemporary Russian songwriters (B.Okoudjava, N.Matveyeva, Y.Kim).
This website is the largest Internet fan page dedicated to Mikhail Scherbakov. This is not an official site, and Mr.Scherbakov wishes to emphasize that he does not participate in its maintenance and selection of information. (On the other hand, he does not object to its existence, too, and since he has no "official" website anyway - here we are.)
This site was originally founded and maintained by Vladimir Smirnov who tragically died, along with two friends, in a mountain climbing accident while descending from the Orizaba Peak in Mexico on December 28, 1999. (The full information about this tragic event can be found at the site of Black Alpinist Company. In addition, the "Memorial" page of this site (in Russian) contains Vladimir's essays, thoughts and letters we were able to put together.) The site is now supported by a group of Vladimir's friends and fellow Scherbakov fans.
At present, we don't have much information in English, but hopefully there will be more, since in our opinion, Shcherbakov's poetry deserves international acknowledgement and will have it eventually.
Presented here are two different catalogs of Mikhail Scherbakov's songs along with some English translations. The translations are not authoritative; we cannot vouch for their accuracy, but we tried to do our best. Some translations were made by professional translators Tanya Jean Wolfson from San Diego, CA, and Genia Gurarie. There are also translations by Larisa Schultz (Jerusalem), Galit Gontar, Pavel Dolganov, Re-Miel, Asya Vaisman, Alexei Minayev and Ekaterina Chapiro. .
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