Maybe there won’t be a big and festive concert, but singer Andris Danilenko calls this the year of his 65th anniversary. The birthday is celebrated on February 12, when Andri’s closest friends will greet him, but if you want to take a flower, you can certainly do it on March 8, when Danilenko will be one of the participants in the concert “Just for you, beautiful ladies” at the VEF Palace of Culture. In his creative life, Andris has sung about various topics, including love, but, first of all, his homeland Latvia and its beauty. By the way, Danilenko’s parents met and fell in love in exile, where his older sister was also born.
Andris not only sings at concerts, but he also likes to play the guitar, which he has had with him since the 9th grade at Ugale secondary school:
“I am learning all the time because, as one of my life teachers, Edmunds Freiberg, said, the meaning of life is self-improvement. Well, I already have three whole guitars, I like to play them in my free time, realizing how much I still don’t know.”
During Andra’s childhood, Ugāle was a small village, its school was focused on sports, and Danilenko also threw, jumped, mostly ran. Then a guy Jānis from Talsiem appeared at the school, who played the guitar. Its sounds literally enchanted the young man, a small school ensemble was formed:
“I really liked the choir, singing lessons. I remember, since childhood, on the roof, leaning against the warm chimney, singing folk songs loudly, because no one around was listening. I looked at the clouds and sang at the top of my voice – I really liked it.”
Then Jānis showed Andrim the first guitar chords, and the singer’s musical talent comes from his mother’s father, grandfather Jānis Gulbja Ugāle, who played the guitar. The father was also very musical – half Ukrainian, half Romanian – the singer still has contacts with his cousins and probably also inherited the temperament from his father, which Danilenko literally managed to use in the Operetta Theater for a few seasons. He had already been assigned the main role in the musical “Cilvēks no Lamanša” when in 1989 Raimonds Paul invited the young singer to the radio. Andris made his debut in Maestro’s Christmas program and was soon accepted as a state soloist.
“Who knows how it is better, fate draws its own lines, but I felt like a fish in water on the Operetta stage. It suddenly stopped because there was an opportunity to work on the radio.”
Since the Ugalian found the Riga cultural workers’ technical school the only place where he could “get attached” to music, Andris enrolled there to learn wind instruments and the specialty of conductor of a variety orchestra. He studied singing with Maigas Grietēnas, together with Aivaras Brīzis, in the early 80s, he started singing in the Salacgrīva stage ensemble “Barometrs” under the direction of Inrigo Arājas, successfully participated in republican shows, festivals.
“The years spent at the technical school gave me the impetus to develop my voice and continue my studies. But I was drafted into the army from the technical school, I don’t know what happened to me, after three months I went and applied myself, I got a hard service in the tanks. I came back and was able to study throughout. Both Aivaras Brīzis and I were trombonists in our course, even now we would blow the gamut calmly.”
We had to travel to Salacgrivu twice a week, besides studying, and concerts every weekend. The singer wonders how he was able to accomplish so much at such a young age, including two years in preparatory courses at the conservatory before starting university studies:
“All kinds of things happened, there were things that got on my nerves. But there were wonderful teachers: Irēna Jasliņa, concertmaster Vilma Cīrule, with whom I learned chamber singing. After the third year, the voice is such that you can understand where to start and where it is better not to, the graduation program of the conservatory was relaxed from opera, more towards chamber music.”
Along with academic voice training, Daniļenko, together with fellow student Andi Pētersonas, took part in the concert program “Here, where the pine forests lie” with evergreen, previously banned Latvian songs as well as Eduard Rozenštrauh’s compositions. 50 concerts with this repertoire were held together with the radio orchestra led by Alņas Zakis. Then came an invitation from Raimonds Paul to participate in the Christmas program. In seven years of work at Latvian Radio, Andris recorded many compositions by various authors, including several arias from operettas, and an important stage was the cooperation with the Radio children’s vocal ensemble “Dzeguzīte”, with which not only concerts were held, but also concert tours.
“Due to lack of time, I probably didn’t participate where I should have participated, for example, in the “Microphone” survey. Back in the mid-nineties, I performed a lot with Cēsi’s group “Sveiks”, which took a lot of time – five years.”
In 1991, the baritone’s first album was released – the album “Staburadze”. In total, Daniilenko’s discography includes 10 albums, mostly with R. Paul’s songs, the last one – “Meitenei ar sārtām lūpām” was a recording of songs by Māras Lasmanis and Normunds Belskis in 2017.
“There is also a cassette with Rita Trenci – Aivars Šic’s song “Ziedošas dynas”, we also performed, for example, on outdoor stages. Also last year, when Rita presented her two books, I sang Imanta Skrastiņas’ songs. You could see that people liked it.”
In 1994, Danilenko began his career as a teacher: first at the evening music school “Rīdze”, where he was joined by Vilma Cīrule, then by founding his own vocal studio “Vivo”. Andris also worked at the Riga School of Culture, since 2001 he taught singing to the actors of the National Theater. Currently, the experienced singer teaches the art of singing at the School of Practical Aesthetics at MJC:
“I tell the students the truth: don’t think that someone will put the golden throat, it is our joint work.”
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2024-02-10 16:04:24
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