Vladimir Badirov Project

Vladimir Badirov was born and raised in Uzbekistan, in the former Soviet Union. Raised in a family of music teachers, he successfully accomplished violin courses at music school.

At the age of 15 he started playing drums. He studied at Tashkent's entertainment studio, and it was clear that drums and percussion would become his favorite instruments. For more than 20 years, Vladimir worked on perfecting his professional skills aspiring to transcend standard musical frameworks. With this purpose in mind, he mastered percussion, drum-computer, and experimentation with rhythms, loops and samples.

He has participated in many musical projects. As a student he was invited to be part of the theatre "Resonance" created at the Union of Theatre Actors of Uzbekistan, with which he went on tour across Central Asia. At the same time, he played in a famous jazz trio, together with leaders of the Uzbek jazz scene, Sergey Gilev (contrabass) and Eduard Kalandarov (piano). In addition, he played with young Tashkent jazzmen Igor Nadejdin (piano) and Vadim Largin (contrabass) and he also performed in concerts and participated in the recording of the album "Asia Band", the group created by Vladimir's friend and messmate Marat Shunkarov, who works in the ethnic jazz style.

Working and playing with the theatre-studio "Ilkhom" became the great teacher for Badirov, when the famous cult director and producer Mark Vail invited Vladimir to participate as a drummer in a performance of "Tortilla's Flat Block" based on the play by John Steinbeck.

From 1994 to 2002 Vladimir worked with singer Yulduz Usmanova, an actress from Uzbekistan. With her group he performed around the globe, played at ethnic pop festivals and participated in the recording of two Yulduz albums.

Since 2002 he played with Uzbekistan national actress, singer Nasiba Abdullaeva. As a session musician he worked with the talented young Uzbek singer Sevara Nazarkhan with which he appeared on the Russian TV show "Apology" hosted by Dmitry Dibrov. They also performed a series of concerts in Moscow, and had a successful Japanese tour.

In 2003, together with Sevara and her musicians, Vladimir worked as member of the "warm-up-band" in the Peter Gabriel's "Grown Up" tour in Europe and America.

While working with other musicians, Vladimir has never put aside the idea of creating his own project, and as a result, he recorded and released his first solo album "Greeting from Nostradamus" with 11 compositions representing a symbiosis of modern rhythms, electronic sounds and splendid oriental colors along with traditional Uzbek folk instruments - Nai, ud, tanbur, karnai, sato, were used for the recording of the album. In the hands of professional performers, they had given a really unique sound to the album.

In 2004, Vladimir Badirov's "Greeting from Nostradamus" was released on the Canadian label Unicorn Records. Always looking for unique sounding artists, Vladimir was introduced to Unicorn by Vitaly Menshikov, the editor of ProgressoR (Uzbekistan Progressive Rock Pages).

Today Vladimir continues working in the same direction. He is planning to create a grandiose show where jazz rhythms will be juxtaposed with oriental melodies and he certainly hopes to acquaint many lovers of Prog with his own work.

Vladimir Badirov is an amazing and unique artist who created his own musical style, which is presented on his first CD "Greeting from Nostradamus".