Biografie

1999 - 2005

Recording and production work on the debut album took place until May 10, 1999, when the debut was finally released. The promotion of Zemfira prior to the release included heavy rotation of singles AIDS, Arrivederci , and Rockets as well as the video clips for those songs. The band immediately went on tour, starting a tradition of celebrating their beginnings with a summer concert in Ufa while recording their second album Forgive Me My Love. The group enjoyed immense popularity from the start, in part because of heavy rotation on radio and television, and in part because a female rocker is a fairly rare and unusual concept for the Russian music scene (which to this day is dominated by scantily-clad female pop singers).

After the release of PMML (Russian abbreviation for Forgive Me My Love) in March 2000, what can only be described as "Zemfiromania" swept the country. Searching and Ripe became instant hits, and the group was invited to headline the festival MAXIDROM. Constant touring wore down on the band, and after the release of 14 Weeks of Silence the band took a break.

In September 2004 Zemfira began studies towards a degree in Philosophy at Moscow State University, but after the first semester she took a sabbatical and didn't resume her studies thereafter. On October 16 on the MTV Russia Awards show the singer performed We Are the Champions together with the Queen.

The forth studio album Vendetta which consists of 15 tracks was released on March 1, 2005. The recording became a result of Zemfira's collaboration with several musiciaons: Igor Vdovin, Korney, Vlad Kreymer, Yuri Tsaler and Oleg Pungin. Primarily the album was going to be named "Oil", but the title was changed few days before the official release. "Vendetta" got many positive reviews.

2007 - present

On February 14 a collection of music videos Zemfira.DVD was released. It contains all singer's clips, except AIDS and Traffic

In May and June 2007 Zemfira embarked on a short concert tour titled Déjà Vu, with performances held in smaller venues (clubs and small theatres). The tour culminated with a Moscow performance at the Green Theatre which was filmed by Renata Litvinova. The tour program focused on stylish remakes of the singer's top hits, often reworked is styles such as jazz, ska, bossa nova, and blues. A new album, Thank You, was released at the beginning of October. It is described by Zemfira herself as 'very positive', in contrast to what she terms the 'restlessness' of Vendetta.

The concert movie Green Theatre in Zemfira, which mixes Zemfira's monologues with selected songs shot during her live performance at the open air show in Moscow, was released in several Russian digital movie theatres on February 21, 2008. Later it was also released on DVD and Blu-ray.

The final concert in support of Thank You was staged on April 1, 2008 at the Olimpiysky stadium in Moscow; some journalists considered it as the best performance in her career[11]. Later in June Zemfira was awarded an independent Steppenwolf prize established by a musical critic Artemy Troitsky. She won in two categories: The Best Performance (for the Olimpiysky show) and The Best Album (Thank You). The movie-concert Green Theatre in Zemfira by Litvinova was named the best musical movie of the year.

On March 21, 2009 a long-awaited album of b-sides Z-Sides leaked into the net.

In June 2010 Zemfira wrote on her official website: "vacation is over" and announced a mini-tour in support of a deluxe-edition of her first three albums (Zemfira, PMML and 14 Weeks of Silence). On August 1 she performed a set of 4 songs on the closing concert of a pop-music contest New Wave. It was her first performance since January 2009. The arrangements of this set were used in the mini-tour in September that included 5 cities: Saint-Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Minsk, Kiev and Moscow. Critics admited that her old songs became more rhythmic and resembled demo-versions due to the new minimalistic style of arrangements. In October Zemfira took part in two tribute concerts "20 Years without KINO" in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg that were dedicated to the memory of Victor Tsoi. Her gig of four covers on Tsoi's songs was seen by some journalists as the most noticeable performance in the program.

On New Year's Eve 2011, the video version of two Moscow concerts staged in Crocus City Hall and Strelka in September 2010 was broadcast on Dozhd' (Rain) TV channel. The video was directed by Renata Litvinova. Then the singer informed her fans that the release of her sixth album had moved to the fall 2011. The first single No Chance (Bez shansov) was presented on Nashe Radio on April 15. During the next 3 months she gave three performances: on May 28 Zemfira took part in the international rock festival Maxidrom along with The Prodigy, Adam Lambert, Korn, Brainstorm and other artists;[19] then she became a Russian headliner of a Muz-TV Awards ceremony show at Olimpiysky stadium on June 3; on July 23 Zemfira performed at the Afisha Picnic outdoor festival in Moscow as the Russian headliner of the main stage. During that gig she presented a new song presumably called Money.

Events met Zemfira