Music is collaboration, and I enjoy contributing to a wide variety of interesting projects. I’ve been really busy, recording in major studios all over the world, and am currently occupied traveling and promoting my work. My second CD, ”BREATHE“, came out in JUNE 2008, and is now promoted on radio and internet. The VIDEO for the song BUTTERFLY is in development. My new single, ”NOT THE ONE“, is a collaboration with innovative hip-hop artist Chance, and will also be heavily promoted on the radio and TV airwaves. The upcoming animated film "TEDDY THE FROG", features four tracks of my music. I’m producing and creating 3-D character models for an animated feature film, which will be in production soon. Finally, there’s a music reality TV SHOW in the works for a music television network. Lots going on.

Born in Soviet Moscow, my childhood was, of course, influenced by the country’s mammoth social challenges, but was further complicated by the early divorce of my parents. But separately and combined, my MOM and DAD helped me develop a deep love of beauty by sharing their own joy in art, music and architecture from my earliest childhood. Enrolled in two separate and rigorous schools so I could study music as well as general education, I learned about drawing, architecture and drafting from MOM, and listened to all kinds of music with my DAD – from Bach to Beatles and Elvis to big band, we loved it all.

Diverse tastes came with me as I trawled the underground Moscow club scene, listening to local Russian bands experiment with a diverse blend of styles, as well as subversive performance artists such as Vladimir Visotskii (sort of a Russian version of Serge Gainsbourg), whose political activities were as inspirational as his music. I loved European and American bands such as Depeche Mode, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and even Italian pop music, which was gaining enormous popularity.

The entrepreneurial bug bit early, too: whether selling clay sculptures at school, gigging with my first band, or washing cars as their owners waited for hours for gasoline, a freelancer had been born. The money went mainly to buying more music, feeding a lifelong obsession and building my career.

My father had made it to New York, and I was finally allowed to join him when I was still a teenager, leaving the growing political turmoil and still raw from the death of one my best friends, Timka, who was hit by a truck the summer before I left. Once I arrived in New York, I learned great self-reliance as I had to learn to navigate that strange and wonderful city even before I’d had a chance to learn the language. I finished high school and worked with the short-lived City Volunteer Corps, where we cleaned up parks and worked as teacher’s aides in the public schools. Even now, I dream of developing creative programs for children, encouraging imagination and preventing the creation of more ”cerebral monkeys“.

Eventually, however, I knew I’d had enough of school, and my mother’s plan for me to enroll in architectural school was clearly not my choice. I sold most of my belongings and left home after graduation, living first on my own, then with roommates, then on the streets for a while. Too proud to panhandle, I became very resourceful, working a few construction jobs, getting help from various churches, collecting cans and doing odd jobs. I was soon living with squatters in an abandoned building in the East Village, and then we New York, driving throughout the Eastern United States for several months, with an open and inquiring mind, hitchhiking or taking rides from people from all over the world. We chased bands, ate apples from stray orchards, and I eventually worked my way through New England and as far west as Chicago before working my way back to New York. It certainly wasn’t glamorous, sleeping outside or staying in awful shelters when I had to, but my sense of adventure and curiosity developed into an openness that somehow continues to define my life, music and art.

Back in New York, I got a job in a health food store and met two girls name Prudence and Angel Irene. They told me a lot about California, and we moved to San Jose pretty quickly, where I lived with Angel Irene and three other roommates in a tiny bungalow near downtown. Blessed with a large crop of overripe avocados after they fell in a storm, I took them to the local farmer’s market and met some Hare Krishnas there. I was invited to dinner, then to their Krishna center in Santa Cruz, where I helped build the new temple and genuinely enjoyed their wonderful food.

My friend Sarb and I decided to go to New Mexico, and after driving around for about a week with a lone hillbilly stranger who seemed to be running from something, we ended up in Prescott Arizona instead. Sarb went home. But I liked the town, so they dropped me off at the Full Moon Coffee House and I stayed in Prescott for a while. I performed with local theater and choral groups, and worked as a nurse’s assistant with Alzheimer’s patients and developmentally disabled children. Soon, I moved to San Francisco, living in a tiny studio apartment for a while. I started work as a financial consultant. then selling real estate while recording whenever I could and performing on the side with my band.

However, after a while, it became clear that it was time to devote my full attention to music and entertainment. I’ve been traveling ever since, recording with amazing people, traveling between Nashville, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. I Often come to Europe: Italy , Amsterdam, France, Denmark, Germany and some others.

The magical thing about the past few years is that the more I open doors, the more I see things coming together, and how the puzzle is starting to unwind in a certain way. It seems that everything I’ve designed, thought and given birth to, even the little thoughts that I held onto, maybe a few years ago, are now coming into reality. It’s so bright now, like I planted a seed, even though I couldn’t see it way back in New York, when I was homeless. Everything was a part of this WHOLE or UNIVERSE, and something was already moving, keeping me moving in this direction. I’m right where I should be. BLESS. Mir Wave