Tamara Miansarova was a Soviet and Russian pop singer with a lyrical soprano voice and a music teacher. She was born Tamara Remnyova in Kirovohrad, then called Zinovievsk, on March 5, 1931, and died in Moscow on July 12, 2017.
She grew up in a creative family and made her first stage appearance at age four. After moving with her mother to Minsk, she studied at the music school affiliated with the Minsk Conservatory, graduating in 1951. She then entered the Moscow Conservatory’s piano department, studying with Lev Oborin, and also took vocal lessons with Dora Belyavskaya. After graduating in 1957, she worked as an accompanist at GITIS before beginning to perform as a solo singer.
In 1958, she won third prize at the All-Union Variety Artists’ Competition, accompanying herself on piano. She later performed with Laci Olah’s orchestra and became a soloist at the Moscow Music Hall in 1960. Igor Granov helped prepare her for pop performances, and she won first prize and a gold medal at the 1962 World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki. In 1963, she received first prize at the Sopot International Song Festival for “Sunny Circle,” also known as “May There Always Be Sunshine.”
Her best-known songs included “Sunny Circle” and “Black Cat,” one of the early Soviet twist songs. From 1964 to 1967 she performed with the group Three Plus Two, formed for her by Leonid Garin. At the 1966 Friendship-66 festival, she won first prizes in Berlin and Prague and special prizes in Warsaw and Sofia. She appeared in musical films and television concerts in Poland and the Soviet Union, and her repertoire included more than 400 songs in Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish.
From 1968 to 1979, Miansarova worked as a vocalist at the Donetsk Philharmonic; from 1979 she worked at the Kislovodsk Philharmonic. She returned to Moscow in the 1980s and taught voice at GITIS from 1988 to 1996, where she was a professor, as well as at other institutions. From 1991 she took part in programs devoted to Soviet songs, and she continued to appear in concerts and television programs. Her memoir, “Tamara Miansarova: On Stage and in Life,” was published in 2012.
Miansarova was named Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1972 and People's Artist of Russia in 1996. She was buried at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.