Diana Dmitrievna Ankudinova (Russian: Диана Дмитриевна Анкудинова, born May 31, 2003)[1] is a Russian singer. Much of her initial fame resulted from her winning two consecutive seasons of You Are Super!, a talent competition show on the Russian NTV network for children who have spent some significant part of their childhood without parental care.[2] Diana Ankudinova's performances were posted on the NTV web site and the NTV YouTube channel, where they soon gained hundreds of millions of views around the world.[2] Diana Ankudinova sings mostly in Russian, English and French. She has also sung in other languages including Spanish, German and Arabic.
Diana Ankudinova Диана Анкудинова | |
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Background information | |
Born | (2003-05-31) May 31, 2003 (age 19) Primorsky Territory. Russia |
Genres | Pop, Folk, Rock |
Occupation(s) | Singer |
Instrument(s) | Vocals, piano, ukulele |
Years active | (national level) 2017-present |
Website | dianaankudinova Pronunciation of Diana Ankudinova
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Diana Ankudinova was born on May 31, 2003, in the far eastern Primorsky Territory of Russia in an area north of the city of Vladivostok. Diana's biological mother physically abused her.[3]
At the age of 3, Diana was left at a bus stop in the winter with a broken collarbone.[3] Diana's biological aunt rescued Diana from the street, but was unable to care for the traumatized child. Diana's aunt made a statement about the abuse of Diana to the local prosecutor, and it was agreed that the young Diana should be turned over to the care of an orphanage in Primorsky Territory which provided for the care of abandoned young children in the general area.
Children from the orphanage were periodically sent to a sanatorium in Arsenyev to help them regain and maintain their physical and mental health. A massage therapist, Irina Anatolyevna Ponik, who worked at the sanatorium developed a special affection for Diana. The daughter of Irina Ponik, who sometimes visited her mother at work, was the one who first began to insist that her mother adopt Diana.[3]
In 2008, Irina Ponik filed the necessary paperwork to assume formal legal guardianship of Diana Ankudinova with the territorial department of guardianship and trusteeship.[4] The new family lived in Arsenyev.[4] In 2012, the family moved far away to the city of Tolyatti in the Samara Oblast of southwestern Russia. The move to Tolyatti was mostly due to Diana's fears that her biological mother might try to find and abuse Diana or even attempt to regain custody of Diana. These fears were so intense that they had been significantly affecting young Diana's mental health.[3][5]
At the age of four-and-a-half years, Diana's speech was extremely poor, with stuttering and other problems. Speech pathologists recommended that she be given singing lessons to improve her general speech and vocal skills.[6] She quickly discovered that she loved singing.
The head of the brass band of the city of Arsenyev, Alexander Varnamov, was the first to say that Diana had an extraordinary and very beautiful voice, and also a perfect ear for music. He predicted a great future for Diana as a singer.[7][8]
Diana's instructors also noticed her unique vocal abilities in her singing. Alexander Varnamov made an agreement with Elena Kazantseva, head the vocal pop ensemble Zhemchuzhinki (Pearls), so that she would accept Diana into the collective.[9] She also sang in a duet "Malinki" under the direction of Elena Kazantseva.
Diana entered the Elegance vocal and choreographic school under the guidance of Anna Pekhtereva in the city of Arsenyev.[10]
Diana began entering many vocal contests while still very young. She also began singing in public events at every opportunity that was presented to her.
After the move to Tolyatti, Diana continued singing in public at every opportunity and continued to enter many vocal competitions. She began studying vocals at the Melody circle of the Tolyatti House of Culture where she took vocal lessons from Svetlana Vovk.[5]
Diana played one of the main roles in the musical Teremok with the Russian orchestra of the Tolyatti Philharmonic in November 2014.[11]
In the theater and music studio at DKIT under the direction of Dmitry Marfin, she played in the musical Visiting the Fairy Tale, and also played the role of Becky Thatcher in the Jazz musical Tom Sawyer and His Friends,[12][13] played the role of Muryonka the cat in the opera "Silver Hoof" in Tolyatti Philharmonic, in the musical Vovka in the Jazz Kingdom, in the musical New Adventures of Electronics.[14]
Here are a few of the prizes and diplomas of Diana Ankudinova:[11]
In late 2016, Diana Ankudinova passed the non-televised preliminary auditions for season 4 of the Russian The Voice Kids.[1] She appeared on the blind auditions of the show that were televised on February 17, 2017. Diana sang "Jodel Time" which was originally performed by the Swiss band Oesch's die Dritten.[1] None of the judges selected Diana, so she was eliminated from the competition. Before Diana left the stage, however, the judges asked her to sing a part of another song. She then sang a part of the Édith Piaf song "Non, je ne regrette rien" in French.
As a result of her televised performance on Russia's The Voice Kids, Diana became so popular with the public that she became the first person on The Voice projects to gain more than a million views on YouTube after failing to pass the initial televised blind auditions on the show.[1]
You Are Super! (Ты супер! in Russian) is a talent competition show on the Russian NTV television network. It is for disadvantaged children who have spent some significant part of their childhood without parental care.[2][16]
You Are Super! has unique rules. There are four jury members, who always sit facing the contestants. At the initial face-to-face stage, the performance of the participants is evaluated by four members of the jury. They vote for the passage of the applicant to the next round by pressing a button. In the first round, the performer needs to get at least three votes, in which case the scene turns green. If the required number of votes has not been received, the stage turns red and the participant is eliminated.
In the second round, each performer must also collect at least three votes, after which the performer goes to the waiting room. At the end of the episode, among all the selected participants, each of the four jury members chooses one performer, who will go to the semifinals. In each of the semifinals, contestants enter the waiting room only if all members of the jury have pressed buttons. In all of the performances of Diana Ankudinova in both the 2018 and 2019 seasons, all four of the jury members pressed their buttons. At the end of the semifinal episodes, each of the four judges must again choose one participant, who then gets the right to go to the final.
The winner of the final episode of the televised competition is chosen by the viewers via SMS voting.
Diana Ankudinova won the 2018 season of You Are Super! with 49 percent of the vote of the viewing audience. The 2019 season of the show was called a superseason and was to consist mostly of winners and finalists from previous seasons. As the 2018 winner, Diana Ankudinova was invited back, and she also won that 2019 superseason.
Immediately after the announcement of Diana's win of the 2018 season of You Are Super!, one of the jury members, Igor Krutoy, promised to give Diana an apartment in Moscow so that she could continue her musical studies in Moscow. Diana was given the keys to the new apartment on August 20, 2018, where she continues to live.[17][18]
Broadcast date | Title | Performance | Language | Songwriters | Original Artist |
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February 10, 2018 | "Dernière Danse" | French | Indila | Indila | |
April 14, 2018 | "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" | English | James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome | James Brown | |
May 12, 2018 | "Rechenka" | Russian | (Russian folk song) | ||
May 25, 2018 (Season finale) | "Tomorrow is a Lie" | English | Igor Krutoy and Lara Fabian | Lara Fabian |
Broadcast date | Title | Performance | Language | Songwriters | Original Artist |
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April 21, 2019 | "Blizzard" | Russian | Fil Pisarev (music), Egor Zakharov (lyrics) | Grigory Leps | |
May 12, 2019 | "Wicked Game" | English | Chris Isaak | Chris Isaak | |
May 26, 2019 (Super-season finale) | "Human" | English | Rory Graham and Jamie Hartman | Rag'n'Bone Man |
Before and after winning the 2018 season of You Are Super!, her biological mother and some other biological relatives wrote to Diana on social networks. Diana had no desire to communicate with any of them, though, since she already had a loving adoptive family who had happily raised her.[19][20]
Diana Ankudinova took part in the 2018 New Wave Junior international contest for young pop music performers in Artek, where she won the Audience Award.[21][22]
She has done a number of solo concerts in Russia, as well as performances in a few nearby countries such as Estonia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
On October 18, 2019, Brad Cooney (US) posted a podcast interview with Diana Ankudinova.[23] Diana gave another interview with a vocal сoach Emre Yücelen from Turkey, which was posted to YouTube on August 24, 2019.[24]
On January 23, 2020, the presentation of the first single by Diana Ankudinova took place in Moscow in the bard club "Capercaillie's Nest". It included songs "As Your voice", "In your city", "How are you there" and "On the waves of fate".[25][26]
On September 10, 2020, the official video for "Into the Sky" was released.[27]
In September 2020, she was accepted as a student at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS).[28][29][30]
On October 4, 2020, Diana acted as a guest star of the 4th season of the You Are Super! program with the song "Into the Sky".[31]
On October 12, 2020, Diana's voice teacher Olga Donskaya died in Moscow.[32] In late 2020, Diana's foster father died.[33]
In December 2020, she decided to attempt to finance her first full CD music album though crowdfunding using the Russian crowdfunding web site Boomstarter.[34] When the crowdfunding period expired in early 2021, Diana Ankudinova had reached 236% of her goal.[35] The released album is entitled "D.A." after the initials of Diana Ankudinova. The album was released in early December 2021. It contains nine original songs.[36]
On March 26, 2021, the official video for "Happiness" was released.[37]
Diana Ankudinova began taking part in ShowMaskGoOn on the NTV channel during its first weekly episode on September 25, 2021.[38] This was a nine-episode weekly televised vocal contest among nine professionals, with the finale scheduled for November 20, 2021. That final show concluded with Diana Ankudinova being declared the overall winner of the series of nine programs.[39][40]
Broadcast date | Title | Performance | Language | Songwriters | Original Artist |
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September 25, 2021 | "Can't Help Falling in Love" | English | Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, George David Weiss | Elvis Presley (1961) | |
October 2, 2021 | "Mom, I'm Dancing" | Russian | Maria Zaitseva and Maria Sheikh | # 2Mashi (2018) | |
October 9, 2021 | "Oh, it is not yet evening" | Russian | Russian Folk Song | ||
October 16, 2021 | "Twist in My Sobriety" | English | Tanita Tikaram | Tanita Tikaram (1988) | |
October 23, 2021 | "The Way" | Russian | Sergei Savvateev | Olga Kormukhina (2010) | |
October 30, 2021 | "Help Me" | Russian | Aleksandr Zatsepin (music) and Leonid Derbenyov (lyrics) for the motion picture The Diamond Arm | Aida Vedishcheva (voiceover) in the motion picture The Diamond Arm (1969) | |
November 6, 2021 | "Crow" (Vorona) | Russian | Maxim Fadeev | Linda (1996) | |
November 13, 2021 | "The Little Prince" | Russian | Mikael Tariverdiev (music) and Nikolai Dobronravov (lyrics) for the motion picture Passenger from the "Equator" | Elena Kamburova (1968) | |
November 20, 2021 (Season finale) | "Personal Jesus" | English | Martin Gore | Depeche Mode (1989) |
Diana Ankudinova released her first full-length studio album, Д.А. ("D.A"), in December to all digital platforms and also to her YouTube account. The album was produced by Brandon Stone (Russian: Брендон Стоун).
When Ankudinova first came to broader attention in 2017, her range was measured as D3 to A5. As of September 2021, her functional range was measured as C3 to B♭5.[41][42] Together with her tessitura, it identifies her potential voice type as dramatic contralto, the deepest, darkest, and most powerful contralto voice.
Additional reference information: