Born and raised in Moscow, Russia, Vlada Brofman has spent the second part of her life in the US, mostly on the East coast. Fully fluent in English, Russian, and French, she appears equally at home in different musical traditions: jazz, world music, bossa nova, French chanson, and the lyric-centered vision of singer-songwriters… Her primary training in acting (with a theatre director from Moscow Semen Rivkin) has been complemented by jazz voice lessons; as a result, her dramatic performance endows each song with rich color and vocal subtlety.
In Innermost, her new album, Vlada digs deeply into her Russian heritage, bringing us some profound singer-songwriter tunes along with poems by Russia’s exceptional Silver Age poets set to music by several composers. Alexander Alabin, a multi-talented pianist and guitarist from NY, wrote the arrangements and recorded many of the album’s tracks. Together with Andrey Matlin (bass, flute, keys), they create a limpid, intimate, and scintillating music, from which, through Vlada’s protean voice and performance, emerges a cast of lively and touching characters.