Alexander Varlamov

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Varlamov (June 19, 1904, in Simbirsk - August 20, 1990, in Moscow) - composer, arranger, singer, conductor, leader of one of the best Soviet jazz orchestras. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1979), author of more than 400 pieces of music. Alexander Vladimirovich Varlamov was born on June 19, 1904 in Simbirsk, in a collegiate family, then State Councilor, member of the Simbirsk District Court. Until September 1918 he lived in Simbirsk, studied at the second male gymnasium. In 1912 his first pieces of music were published in Simbirsk - the play “Sadness” and the waltz “Evening”. In 1922 he entered GITIS (in one workshop with Erast Pavlovich Garin and Nikolai Pavlovich Okhlopkov). However, he soon leaves there and enters the Gnesins School in the class of Reinhold Moritsevich Glier and Dmitry Romanovich Rogal-Levitsky (a classmate in composition class - Aram Khachaturian). As a jazz bandleader debuted in 1934. The attention of the music community was attracted by the cooperation of Varlamov with the Negro singer from the United States Celestina Kool. Later he assembled the first in the USSR group of improvisational musicians (“Seven”). In the autumn of 1938 he created a jazz orchestra of the All-Union Radio Committee, with which he worked until September 1939, having managed to take part in the first national television program. In 1939-1940 led the jazz orchestra MVTU them. N. Bauman. From the summer of 1940 to the summer of 1941, he was the chief conductor of the USSR State Jazz Orchestra. At the beginning of the war, the State Jazz Committee of the USSR was transformed into the Exemplary Jazz Orchestra of the People's Commissariat of Defense and almost with its full complement went to the front, where most of the orchestra members died. Varlamov, who remained in Moscow, headed the sympho-jazz at the All-Union Pop Art Studio (Melody Orchestra, soloist - Deborah Panto-Nechetskaya) and prepared the program for performances before American sailors in the northern ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. In January 1943, he was arrested for slander, he was sentenced to eight years in prison by decision of the Special Council. He served his term in Ivdellag in the Northern Urals, where he led the propaganda brigade and jazz orchestra until 1948. After liberation in 1951 he lived in Kazakhstan. He worked as a teacher in Karaganda. After rehabilitation in 1956, he returned to Moscow, wrote music for variety orchestras, films and television productions, made a number of recordings of his own compositions with a symphonic composition. In the last years of his life he lived on the street. Leskov, d. 10 b, in the Moscow district of Bibirevo. He died on August 20, 1990 in Moscow. He was buried at the Domodedovo cemetery.