Stravinsky, Nikolai Alekseevich

Nikolai Stravinsky was born in the city of Ulyanovsk on February 23, 1986 . Nikolai was interested in music from childhood, and on his fifth birthday, his parents gave him a baby drum. First, Nikolai learned to play it ^[2] , later he began to study playing the guitar and piano ^[3] . His musical taste was influenced by The Beatles , which is still one of his favorites ^[3] . Later, his parents sent Nikolai to a music school, where he sang in the choir ^[2] . For nine years he studied at a choreographic school, in which he studied classical, folk and pop dances ^[2] . He entered a music school, at the age of 18 he transferred to study in Samara. Mostly bad impressions about Ulyanovsk. He graduated from music school and Samara Music College. Shatalova in the class of classical guitar in 2007, graduated from the Samara State Academy of Culture and Arts in the class of percussion in 2013. While studying at the academy, he worked for a year and a half in the symphony orchestra of the opera and ballet theater in a group of percussion instruments ^{[2] [4] [5]} . While working in the theater, Nikolay mastered many percussion instruments, which subsequently influenced the music in the second album, “Fairies of the Dragee” ^[6] .

While going to kindergarten, I imagined how I play music on stage. I could pound my chair for hours, imagining that I was playing drums on a big stage. In general, as a child, I fantasized a lot, but gradually my fantasies began to become real.

- from an interview with OnMusicStage.Com ^[7]

Dragee Fairy

Nikolai performed in various rock groups, but the turning point was the founding of the “Dragee Fairy” group, to which he got on an announcement about finding a vocalist. There he began to play the guitar and write lyrics ^[3] . The first concert of the group was held on August 25, 2005 ^[8] , this day is considered to be the group’s birthday. On that day, her name was different - "Corpses for spare parts" ^[4] . The ensemble’s subsequent name, “The Dragee Fairy,” was taken from Tchaikovsky ’s ballet The Nutcracker , based on a fairy tale by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann . Against the background of Samara performers, the group stood out for its high sound quality and powerful energy, which pretty soon brought it fame in other cities. The first album was recorded in the band’s hometown, and was mixed in St. Petersburg with the help of Animal Jazz sound engineer. Mastering was done by Alexander Karelin, who previously collaborated with the group Jane Air . It took only two days to record all the guitars for the album, 6 hours of continuous work on each day ^[7] . Each song of the first album consisted of approximately 150 sound tracks, there were no analogues of such an experiment in Russia yet ^[4] .

Domestic alt-rock from Samara is of such high quality that if it weren’t for Russian-language texts, the record could easily be mistaken for an unreleased album, for example, Serge Tankyan.

- Reviewer of Rolling Stone magazine Dmitry Sirotkin ^[8]

The group quickly gained momentum, December 30, 2010 released the last album "Danse de la Fée Dragée", and the participants took a temporary vacation, and Stravinsky moved to live in Moscow .

“Missiles from Russia” and “Cockroaches!”

Around the same time, Dmitry Spirin was looking for a man for his new group. Friends advised him to Stravinsky. So Nikolay got into the group “ Rockets from Russia ”, which specializes in playing covers for rock hits. In this group, Nikolai plays the drums and sings in some songs. Later, the guitarist Denis Khromykh leaves the “Cockroaches!” Group, and just at that time Stravinsky moved to live in Moscow. Spirin invited him to the “Cockroaches!” Group to replace the departed rhythm guitarist ^[9] . Initially, from August 2011, Stravinsky was part of the temporary group “Cockroaches!”, Later became a regular member of the group and took part in recording albums of the group under the name “ MaximumHappy I ”, “ MaximumHappy II ” ^[10] and “The Power of One” During the “Baltic mini-tour” of the “Cockroaches!” group in Latvia and Estonia in 2014, the drummer of the group Sergey Prokofiev did not manage to get a visa and therefore, he was replaced at concerts by Nikolai Stravinsky. In 2017, Nikolai leaves the “Cockroaches!” And “Missiles from Russia” groups in connection with the flight to permanent residence in America.

One of the most important, perhaps. Because it turned out to be a colossal practice, namely a concert, since before that I had never performed so much live. From some professional point of view, I went up to a new level, precisely as an artist on the stage - for me it was a huge leap up.

- the answer to the question about the significance of the Cockroach group! for Nikolai from an interview with BritishWave.Ru ^[11]

Selfieman and other projects

In 2009, the Animal Jazz group recorded a cover version of the song “Circles on the Water” of the group “ Time Machine ”, they called Nikolai to record the guitar solo ^[9] . In July 2013, Stravinsky starred in the Snow Patrol video for the song The Lightning Strike ^[12] . Around the same time, Nikolai released his first experimental solo project called Nikolay Stravinsky, the single includes only three songs ^[13] . A distinctive feature of Nikolay Stravinsky from everything that Nikolay did before is the genre of compositions: they combine a mixture of hip-hop, disco and pop. The single was recorded by: Anton Semin from the Idea Fix group, David “Ptaha” Nuriev from the Centr group, Sergey Repin from the “Fairy Dragee” and Timur Esetov from Anacondaz ^[13] .

November 21, 2013 Nikolai took part in the project “show MONICA. Master class ”of the youTube music channel showMONICA ^[14] , where he gave a master class on playing the guitar ^[15] . At the end of the year, Idea Fix called Nikolai to work on his single “Cuadrilla Ballista”, for which Stravinsky recorded two guitar solos ^[16] .

For about a year and a half, Nikolai Stravinsky has been working on his new project called Selfieman , which will be completely in English: “English is very melodic, and it seems to me very suitable for this concept.” ^[17] The name was chosen just a month before the album’s release ^[9] and it turned out from the merger of the two words " selfie " and " mania " ^[11] . The album is called "Transparent Things". When creating the album, a significant influence on Stravinsky was made by the music of the band Biffy Clyro ^[11] . From February to April, studios in Düsseldorf and Moscow recorded the first album ^[18] . Almost all the music was recorded by Nikolai at home ^[19] and drums were recorded at a studio in Moscow in Dusseldorf, vocals and guitars were rewritten somewhere ^{[20] [21] [22]} . All vocal and instrumental parts were performed by Nikolai himself ^{[ 23] [24]} , and all the texts were written by his friend Dmitry Labzin ^{[20] [22] [24] [25]} . The cover artwork was done by St. Petersburg designer Sofya Miroedova. The idea of ​​the drawing came up with Nikolai and Dmitry ^[24] .

On September 11, the first video trailer ^[26] is released on YouTube . True was chosen as the song for the first clip, specifically Stravinsky worked on it for more than a year ^[17] . On September 15, 2014, the premiere of the video for the song True ^{[27] [28]} was premiered on MTV ; on the same day, the single True was released on the digital platforms iTunes ^[29] , Google Play ^[30] and Amazon ^[31] . The video was shot in April, in Iceland , and took three days ^[24] . The director and scriptwriter of the video was Drazen Kuljanin, a Swedish director ^{[11] [21] [32]} , specializing in the shooting of clips and short films, and the operator was Anna Patarakina, who previously worked with the band Clean Bandit ^[33] , it was she who chose the future director ^{[ 24]} . The video starred the Swedish model Hulda Vigdísardóttir. Later, the site “Days.ru” put this video in the top five best videos of 2014 ^[34] . On October 10, 2014, the second song from the album entitled “The Stars Collide” ^{[35] [36]} was posted on the Internet. October 27, 2014 on the site SVOY.RU the premiere of the album " Transparent Things " took place ^[37] . In December 2014, Colta.Ru put the album “Transparent Things” in seventh place on the list of the best Russian albums of the month ^[38] . On March 4, 2015, the trailer for the band’s second video for the song “Nothing I Can Do” is released on the official youtube channel, and on March 13 the video itself was shot in Paris ^[39] . The group quickly gains popularity, begins to give concerts and takes part in such summer festivals as Dobrofest ^{[40] [41]} . The concert lineup included Nikolai's friends drummer Sergey Kivin and guitarist Evgeny Ryakhovsky from Animal Jazz , as well as guitarist from Sakura Alexey Lovyagin ^{[11] [23]} . On February 12, 2016, Selfieman released its second album, Relative Time ^[42] . In 2016, Nikolai refuses the full-fledged composition of musicians and begins to perform alone ^[43] .

Currently, Nikolai plays electric guitars Gibson SG and Fender Telecaster , a classic Fender acoustic guitar , uses Paiste cymbals ^[22] . Uses a tube stack of firms such as Marshall or Mesa / Boogie ^[22] . At concerts with the group "Cockroaches!" I used the Boss processor ^[22] . The microphones on stage are the Shure SM58 or Shure Beta ^[22] .

Fairy Dragee

• 2006 - Demo
• 2009 - “Don't Think, Don't Repeat - Just Act”
• 2010 - Revenge / Zero (single)
• 2010 - Danse de la Fée Dragée

Cockroaches!

• 2013 - MaximumHappy I
• 2013 - MaximumHappy II
• 2014 - Russian Democrazy (US release)
• 2014 - MaximumHappy Live
• 2016 - “The Power of One”

Nikolay Stravinsky

• 2013 - Nikolay Stravinsky

Selfieman

• 2014 - Transparent Things
• 2016 - Relative Time
• 2017 - “Meanwhile In Russia”

• Nikolay on Twitter
• The official site of the "Cockroaches!"
• "Selfieman at Artefaq Club" review for a concert of Selfieman
• “One Day Out of Life” Nikolai Stravinsky
• Master class - Nikolai Stravinsky
• Interview with Nikolai Stravinsky on RadioRadio