Last year, an actor, composer, multi-instrumentalist and singer Pavel Smeyan (whose biography is presented in this article) would have turned 60 years old. This publication contains some interesting facts from the life and work of the famous artist.
Childhood P. Smeyan
The hero of our article was born in 1957 in Moscow, in a family where both parents worked in film production. Grandfather and grandmother of the future singer were professionally engaged in music. Pavel Smeyan was not the only child of mom and dad: forty minutes after him, his twin brother Alexander was born.
Adult family members, each of whom was not alien to creativity and art, decided to raise their children in the best traditions of Soviet education. From an early age, both brothers were assigned to a music school. In an interview with various publications, Pavel Smeyan spoke about the early period of his biography in the following ways: he and his twin brother were so similar that distinguishing one from another was not an easy task.
Witty children often came up with jokes and practical jokes based on this. Once, when Alexander had to take an exam at a music school on the subject “General Piano”, in which he was not too strong, Pavel went to the test instead, drawing a mole on his cheek, which was the hallmark of his twin brother.
Childhood friends
Quite often, correspondents from various newspapers and magazines asked questions about the early pages of the biography of Pavel Smeyan. The actor also spoke about such an interesting moment about his childhood: a boy lived nearby, who later played a major role in the famous Soviet film "Dirk".
Together with him, the future singer sometimes participated in street hooliganism and pranks. For example, they stole fruit several times from a food stall near their home.
Musical idols
Smeyan was brought up in a family where the love of music was passed down from generation to generation, from childhood he played and listened to the works of classical composers in the recordings. He always liked opuses, which were quite complex in their harmony and texture, so Slonimsky and Debussy became his favorite academic composers of the boy.
The appearance of rock music in the biography of Pavel Smeyan
The artist’s childhood was in the heyday and most popular rock music. He heard the first songs in this style when senior comrades brought portable tape recorders into the courtyard, from the speakers of which the voices of American and English and stars were heard. New music immediately won the heart and determined the desire of the young man for a professional occupation of art.
Pavel Smeyan, who always had a tremendous sense of humor, once spoke about a comic incident that happened to him in his teens. Once, he and his brother were invited to play in an amateur ensemble of the local palace of culture. At the disposal of this group were chic at that time Czech electric guitars.
With such an instrument, the boy came to classes in a music school and asked the teacher if she could give him notes of Chuck Berry's composition "Move over, Beethoven." When she shook her head in the negative, Paul said that he was very sorry and left. In the evening, a telephone rang in the apartment. The teacher told the parents that their son had come to school in the morning with some strange subject, like a gun, said he was unhappy with Beethoven and left school.
The beginning of professional activity
The creative biography of Pavel Smeyan began at the moment when he and his brother graduated from high school and entered the Moscow Gnesin School at the variety department (in the saxophone class). At the same time, the twins played in the group they created, called Victoria. Over the two years of the existence of this team, young people managed to achieve some popularity and get a job in the Moskontsert.
How Pavel Smeyan became a theater actor
In the early eighties, one of Smeyan’s friends, Chris Kelmi, who played at that time in the Autograph group, said that the Lenkom Theater needed a new musical team to participate in the rock opera Death of Joaquin Murieta as an accompanying band.
All members of the group, being professionals in their field, were able to learn the parties in one night and in the morning appeared before the art commission, headed by director Mark Zakharov. Having played all the numbers from the play, they showed the council members their own program, which consisted of hard rock compositions.
The performance was liked by Mark Zakharov, Nikolai Karachentsov and Alexander Zbruev, and the team was hired. The theater director allowed his wards to improvise not only musically, but also as participants in the play. For example, members of the group could allow themselves some kind of cue during the performance or even exit the orchestra pit and walk with the instrument around the stage. Zakharov immediately liked the excellent plasticity of the new musician Pavel.
This caused a turning point in the biography of Pavel Smeyan. When the new rock opera by Alexei Rybnikov “Juno and Avos” was staged on the stage of Lenkom, a separate role was introduced for the artistic musician - the narrator. After the musician in the mid-eighties decided to leave the theater, the leadership of the corpses faced a difficult question: who should replace him? The second such artist could not be found. Until now, his role is played by two actors. One is responsible for the dramatic component of the part, and the other for the musical.
Other projects
After leaving the theater, the actor played in many musical groups, recorded with an ensemble called "Apostle" in the early nineties, an album consisting of his own songs.
Fell in love with the audience of the Lenkom Theater as an artist of rock opera, Pavel Smeyan was invited several times by other theaters to participate in musicals. In the last years of his life, he actively worked on the creation of his own rock opera "Word and Case", which was written based on the novel by Alexei Tolstoy.
Also, Pavel Evgenievich participated in the recording of music for such famous films as "Mary Poppins, goodbye!" and "The Trust That Burst."
Personal life
Pavel Smeyan, whose biography and career is discussed in this article, was married three times. The musician's first wife was the famous singer Natalya Vetlitskaya.
In the last marriage, the actor had a son, who is currently 9 years old.
Untimely demise
The artist’s twin brother tragically died in the early eighties. The circumstances of his death are still unclear.
Pavel Smeyan in 2009 heard terrible news from doctors. He was diagnosed with cancer. Treatment abroad did not give the expected result. The cause of death in the biography of Pavel Smeyan is usually called pancreatic cancer. The actor and musician passed away on July 10, 2009. He was buried in the Khovansky cemetery.
Finally
The creative heritage left by the musician totals more than 100 songs. He wrote many of these works himself. Last year, a collection of his recordings was published, including both his lifetime albums and previously unreleased material.