Muslim Magomaev’s Family: “We Called the Emergency Ambulance, But, When the Doctors Came, He Had Passed Away”

Muslim Magometovich Magomaev (1942-2008), Honoured Artist of Russia. THE BOSS.

World-famous Azerbaijani singer, People’s Artist of the USSR Muslim Magomaev, died on Friday in Moscow after a long period of illness. He had felt ill this morning, Magomayev’s family told APA from Moscow. “We called the emergency ambulance, but, when the doctors came, he had passed away”. Magomaev’s family said that he was feeling poorly frequently recently. Relatives wanted to take him to hospital, but, he wished to stay at home. There was no report about the date of his funeral.

Magomaev was born on 17 August 1942 in Baku. He was a solo singer of Azerbaijan State Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1963 and graduated from the Azerbaijan State Conservatory in 1968. The Government sent him to Italy to develop his musical education and he passed an internship in La Scala Theatre in Milan, Italy in 1964-65. He was an art director of Azerbaijan State Band-Symphonic Orchestra from 1975 and performed concerts in CIS countries, France, Bulgaria, Poland, Finland, Canada, Iran, amongst other locations. He was awarded with a number of medals and orders form the former USSR and Azerbaijan.

25 October 2008

Tamara Grigorieva

APA

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=90878

Soviet Pop Legend Muslim Magomaev Dies at 66

Muslim Magometovich Magomaev (1942-2008), Honoured Artist of Russia

Russian news agencies said Soviet-era opera and pop singer Muslim Magomaev has died. He was 66. ITAR-Tass news agency cited his widow Tamara Sinyavskaya as saying he died at his Moscow apartment after a long illness. Other news agencies cite the government as their source. In July, the Azeri news agency APA reported that Magomaev suffered from heart disease.

Magomaev started his career as an opera singer, but, sold millions of albums and concert tickets after switching to popular music. His fame was at its peak in the 1960s and 70s. His grandfather, also named Muslim, was a composer of opera and folk music. Muslim Magometovich Magomaev (born 17 August 1942) was an Azerbaijani baritone operatic and pop singer of the 1960s and 1970s.

Muslim Magomaev represented one of the most respected artistic dynasties in Azerbaijan. His grandfather Muslim Magomaev (1885-1937), a friend and contemporary of the prominent Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov, was one of the founders of Azerbaijani-composed music. Magomaev’s father, Mahammad Magomaev, who died during World War II, was a gifted scenic designer, and his mother was an actress. Muslim learned to play a piano as a child, and began to take lessons from teachers of voice at the age of 14. He finished the piano and composition class of the musical school at Baku Conservatoire, and, then, graduated from the vocal class of Baku conservatoire. As a teenager, he became interested in Italian songs, American jazz, and other styles of popular music.

In 1962, at the age of 20, Magomaev first appeared in Moscow where he performed within the frameworks of the Days of Azerbaijani Culture. He sang two musical pieces in a gala-concert on the USSR’s main stage, the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, and became a celebrity on the spur of the moment. A year later, he gave his first solo concert in the Moscow Tchaikovsky Concert Hall to a full house and became a soloist of the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. Muslim earned fame in the USSR as an opera singer with Rossini’s Barber of Seville. He also became known for his arias from Puccini’s Tosca, Hajibeyov’s Koroghlu, and Shah Ismayil, which was composed by his grandfather.

25 October 2008

Pravda.ru

http://english.pravda.ru/russia/history/25-10-2008/106621-Muslim_Magomayev-0

Muslim Magomaev, “Russian Sinatra”, Dies in Moscow

Muslim Magometovich Magomaev (1942-2008), a true “Chairman of the Board” and “Generalissimo”. We shall miss him greatly. His decency and humility shone forth to all. The world suffered a great loss today.

Singer Muslim Magomaev, a legendary crooner of the Soviet stage, died in Moscow on Saturday (local time), aged 66, after a long illness, his personal website and Russian news agencies reported. Magomaev, who launched his career with an internship at Milan’s famed La Scala opera theatre in 1963 and who enjoyed great success at Paris’s Olympia theatre, abandoned opera in favour of a more pop repertoire, becoming a legend of the Soviet Union’s 1960s generation.

Born in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku in 1942, Magomaev sang over 600 Russian and Neapolitan romances, classical arias, and pop songs, and was himself the author of over 20 songs and film soundtracks. Named a People’s Artist of the USSR in 1973, Magomaev later founded Azerbaijan’s state symphonic orchestra and headed it, 1975-89.

“Muslim’s death is one of the worst shocks for me, but, his first appearance many years ago was also a shock, happy, sunny, and wonderfully emotional, he immediately won over colleagues who admitted he was more talented”, friend and fellow singer Lev Leshchenko said. “Muslim was one and only, he gave people new hopes, and all of our country sang his songs, he was a great singer, a great artist”, Mr Leshchenko told the online newspaper Dni.

President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered their condolences to Magomaev’s widow, opera singer Tamara Sinyavskaya, with Russia’s culture ministry comparing Magomaev to Frank Sinatra and Yves Montand in their statement. Ninth round matches in Azerbaijan’s football championship will begin with a minute of silence honouring Magomaev, the website Azerisport.com reported.

26 October 2008

AFP

As quoted by the Australian Broadcasting Company website

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/26/2401388.htm?section=world

The Starry Duet of Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasilyev: A Ballet Festival in Tribute to Their 50 Years on the Stage

A major tribute to Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasilyev, “the most beautiful pair in 20^th century Russian ballet”, is now being held from 24 to 27 October on the stage of the legendary Bolshoi Theatre here in Moscow. The four-day festival dedicated to the 50 years Vasiliyev and Maksimova have each spent on stage and teaching young dancers pays well-deserved tribute to dancers who have become a symbol of impeccable mastery to the whole world. It was not for nothing that the towering figure of Italian cinema, Franco Zefirelli, invited them to add their dancing brilliance to his famous film La Traviata. Their splendid dancing in the “Ball Scene” shone brilliantly and embellished the segment.

Long a husband and wife, Maximova and Vasilyev are no longer active dancers, but, are still in great demand in training a young generation of dancers in the grand traditions of classical Russian ballet. In addition, Vladimir Vasilyev is a choreographer and he described his new work to us. “A choreographer is someone in whom thought, feelings, and means of expression come together to get his ideal across to the audience. Nonsense will never be understood no matter how you present it. It seems to me that that contemporary ballet can be described as such only if it gets to your heart and soul the way it did decades and centuries ago. If this is present, one can say that the presentation is truly contemporary”.

People started to call Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasilyev a unique phenomenon at the end of the 1950s when the Bolshoi Ballet was touring Britain, the US, and China. Since then, the two have headlined the Bolshoi’s numerous tours of the world. Their inimitable dancing has been immortalized in many films, including two documentaries about the artists themselves, one of them made by the famous French filmmaker Claude Lelouche. It’s entitled simply Katya and Volodya, the way the great dancers are usually addressed by their near and dear. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Katya and Volodya are being fêted by the principals of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky ballet troupes, who are joined by the leading lights of Paris’s Grand Opéra and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma…

25 October 2008

Olga Bugrova

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=rus&q=87474&cid=24&p=25.10.2008