Lyudmila Zykina was a Soviet and Russian singer and music educator, known for performing Russian folk songs, romances, and popular songs. She was born in Moscow on June 10, 1929, and died there on July 1, 2009. Her repertoire included more than 2,000 songs and vocal works.
Raised in a working-class family, Zykina took part in amateur performances from childhood and played guitar and button accordion. She attended a school for working youth and later worked as a lathe operator, a hospital attendant, and a seamstress before beginning her professional singing career.
In 1947, after competing in a nationwide contest for young performers, she joined the Pyatnitsky Russian Folk Choir. She studied solo singing with Alexandra Prokoshina and the Klodnina sisters, and developed an individual approach to folk performance. The choir took her abroad for the first time in 1948, when it performed at the Prague Spring festival. After a temporary departure from the group, she joined the All-Union Radio Russian Folk Song Choir in 1951, where Anna Rudneva and Olga Kovalyova helped guide her development. She sang in choirs for a total of 13 years.
Zykina began performing as a soloist with the radio choir in 1951 and made her solo debut the following year with “My Brown Eyes Were Winking at Me.” Her first studio records appeared in 1955. From 1960, she was a soloist with Mosconcert. Her early repertoire included traditional songs and works by contemporary composers. She became especially associated with “The Volga Flows,” which she first performed in 1963 and which became her signature song.
Her singing combined Russian folk traditions with popular and academic styles. She was known for a resonant mezzo-soprano, a broad range, and unaccompanied performances of long-form folk songs. In 1968, she performed the vocal part in Rodion Shchedrin’s oratorio Poetoria; in 1970, she took part in his oratorio Lenin in the Heart of the People. She also performed romances and songs by contemporary composers, and created concert programs devoted to Russian folk music and romance.
In 1969, Zykina graduated from the Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov Music College; in 1977, she completed her studies at the Gnessin State Musical-Pedagogical Institute. From 1977 until her death, she was soloist and artistic director of the State Academic Russian Folk Ensemble “Russia.” She also taught at the Moscow State Institute of Culture and the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music. Many of her students went on to become competition laureates, performers, and teachers.
Zykina received the titles of People's Artist of the USSR and People's Artist of the RSFSR, the Lenin Prize in 1970, and the Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR in 1983. Her other honors included the title Hero of Socialist Labour. Her recordings sold in millions of copies, and she performed in 92 countries.