Alexander Gradsky
Alexander Borisovich Gradsky (born Fradkin; November 3, 1949, Kopeysk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, USSR – November 28, 2021, Moscow, Russia) was a Soviet and Russian singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, poet, and composer, widely regarded as one of the founders of Russian rock. He was named People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 1999 and received the State Prize of the Russian Federation the same year. Born in Kopeysk, his father, Boris Abramovich Fradkin, was a mechanical engineer originally from Kharkiv who had been evacuated to Chelyabinsk with his parents in 1941, and his mother, Tamara Pavlovna Gradskaya, was a GITIS graduate, actress, and later a literary staff member at the magazine Theatrical Life. In 1957, the family moved to Moscow. His mother had a profound influence on his artistic development, and after her death in 1963 he adopted her surname, Gradsky, in her memory. For several years he also lived with his maternal grandmother in Rastorguyevo, Moscow Oblast.
Gradsky's musical influences were exceptionally broad, ranging from Russian folk music, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, and The Beatles to Czeslaw Niemen, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Mark Bernes, Leonid Utyosov, and later such bands as The Doors, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, and The Police. He graduated from the Dunaevsky Children's Music School in violin in 1967 and from the Gnessin State Musical Pedagogical Institute, where he studied academic singing, in 1974. He also studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory under Tikhon Khrennikov from 1976 to 1977.
His musical career began in December 1963 with the student group Tarakany, made up of Polish students at Moscow State University, with whom he performed songs by Elvis Presley and the twist hit "The Best City on Earth." In 1965 he founded Slavyane, one of the earliest Soviet rock bands, and in 1966 created Skomorokhi, the group that brought him his greatest early popularity. With Skomorokhi he won first place at the Silver Strings festival in 1971. He also played in Los Panchos and Skify, briefly worked as a saxophonist at the Donetsk Philharmonic in 1967, and from August 1970 to April 1971 was a vocalist and guitarist with Vesyolye Rebyata. His collaboration with composer David Tukhmanov led to his participation in the 1972 album How Beautiful the World Is.
A major breakthrough came in 1974 when director Andrei Konchalovsky invited him to compose the music and perform the vocal parts for the film A Romance for Lovers after the original composer left the project. The film's success brought Gradsky nationwide fame. In 1975, the London-based magazine Music Week named him the USSR's Star of the Year for 1974. He wrote lyrics for some of his own songs, and in 1976 recorded Alexandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov's "How Young We Were" for the film My Love in the Third Year. The song became a laureate of the Song-77 festival and remained his signature piece for the rest of his life. That same year he appeared at the Bratislava Lyre competition, and in 1977 he composed and performed the soundtrack for the animated film The Princess and the Cannibal.
Gradsky was a prolific and stylistically versatile composer. He authored the rock opera Stadium, dedicated to the memory of Victor Jara, a project he worked on for more than a decade before releasing it in 1985 with an all-star cast that included Alla Pugacheva, Iosif Kobzon, Elena Kamburova, Andrei Makarevich, Andrei Mironov, and Mikhail Boyarsky. After Vladimir Vysotsky's death in 1980, he dedicated the composition "Song of a Friend" to him and returned to writing socially themed songs and poetry. By the mid-1980s he had developed a solo singer-songwriter program built around sharply satirical works such as "Anti-Perestroika Blues," "Song About Television," and "Southern Farewell." In 1983, after substituting for Boris Grebenshchikov at a concert in Moscow, he was reprimanded by the concert authorities and questioned by the KGB. He also helped organize Soviet rock festivals, including Rock Panorama, and took part in a concert supporting the liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster.
From 1987, Gradsky was a member of the USSR Union of Composers. In 1988 he performed the role of the Astrologer in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel at the Bolshoi Theatre under Yevgeny Svetlanov. That same year he was finally able to travel abroad, visiting the United States for Ted Turner's symposium Choices for the Future. He later appeared in joint projects and concerts with Liza Minnelli, Charles Aznavour, John Denver, Kris Kristofferson, Dionne Warwick, Sammy Davis Jr., Grateful Dead, and Cindy Peters in the United States and across Europe. After one of his concerts with John Denver in Japan in 1990, he signed a contract with Victor Entertainment, under whose label he released the albums Metamorphoses and The Fruits From the Cemetery and gave concerts in Japan featuring both his own Russian-language songs and Western hits, as well as Japanese classical romances.
He also composed pioneering Soviet rock ballets, including Man, Rasputin, and Jewish Ballad, first staged by the Kyiv Ballet Theatre, while later works were produced by the Ballet on Ice Theatre. In the post-Soviet era, he remained a major cultural figure, composing music for more than 40 feature films and dozens of documentaries and animated films, releasing more than 18 albums, and serving as deputy chairman of the Moscow Union of Composers. He hosted the radio program Alexander Gradsky's Hit Parade, which featured around 107 artists from different genres, and appeared on a number of television programs. In 1991 he founded the Moscow music theater Gradsky Hall and remained its first artistic director until his death; although the institution was founded in 1991, its dedicated venue in Moscow opened in 2014 after more than two decades of construction.
Gradsky was known for his independence of judgment and often harsh criticism of the Russian rock scene and mainstream television, insisting on high professional standards and describing himself as an outsider. In 2009 he released the opera Master and Margarita as an audio recording with a star-studded cast of Russian performers, including Elena Minina, Nikolai Fomenko, Andrei Makarevich, Iosif Kobzon, Lyubov Kazarnovskaya, Vladimir Zeldin, Grigory Leps, Aleksei Petrenko, Valery Zolotukhin, Alexander Rosenbaum, Lolita Milyavskaya, and Arkady Arkanov. In 2011 he released the album Neformat. Books about him appeared in 2013 and 2019, reflecting his status as one of the grand figures of Russian music.
From 2012 to 2021, Gradsky gained renewed popularity as a mentor on the television show Golos (The Voice). In the first three seasons, contestants from his team—Dina Garipova, Sergey Volchkov, and Alexandra Vorobyova—won the competition, and in 2017 his contestant Selim Alakhyarov also took first place. He returned again for the anniversary season in 2021; his last appearance on the program was broadcast on December 10, after his death, and his finalist Alisher Karimov finished in second place. His daughter Maria also appeared on the show as one of his advisers.
Gradsky was married four times. His first marriage, to Natalia Gradskaya, he later described as a youthful act. His second wife was the actress Anastasia Vertinskaya; they were married from 1976 to 1980, though they separated earlier. His third wife was Olga Gradskaya, with whom he had two children, Daniil Gradsky, born in 1981, and Maria Gradskaya, born in 1986. From 2003 he lived with actress Marina Kotashenko, whom he married in 2021; they had two sons, Alexander, born in 2014, and Ivan, born in 2018. Gradsky also held U.S. citizenship in addition to Russian citizenship.
On November 26, 2021, Gradsky was hospitalized in Moscow with a suspected stroke and taken to intensive care. He died in the early hours of November 28, 2021, at the age of 72, without regaining consciousness; the cause of death was an ischemic stroke. The farewell ceremony was held on December 1 at Gradsky Hall, and he was buried at the Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow. A monument was unveiled at his grave in October 2024.
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