Joseph Kobzon
Joseph Kobzon was a Soviet and Russian pop singer and music educator, known for his baritone voice. He was born in Chasiv Yar on September 11, 1937, and died in Moscow on August 30, 2018.
He graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Mining Technical College in 1956. After studying singing with Leonid Tereshchenko, he entered the vocal faculty of the Gnessin State Musical Pedagogical Institute in 1959. He began performing professionally as a vocalist in a circus program and later left the institute to pursue concert work.
From 1959 to 1962, Kobzon was a soloist with All-Union Radio; he then worked with the State Concert organization and, from 1965 to 1989, Mosconcert. He launched a solo career in the early 1970s. His honors as a performer included awards at the Sopot International Song Festival, the Friendship-66 festival and the Golden Orpheus festival.
His repertoire ranged from popular songs and romances to operatic and operetta arias and Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish folk songs. He also performed songs by Arkady Ostrovsky, Mark Fradkin, Oscar Feltsman and Alexandra Pakhmutova. Over his career, he performed more than 3,000 songs. His singing combined bel canto technique with clear diction and attention to the words and their poetic phrasing.
From 1984, Kobzon led the vocal and pop department at the Gnessin institute and taught pop singing; he became a professor in 1993. He received the USSR State Prize in 1984, was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1987, and received the Lenin Komsomol Prize in 1976.