Today our reporter has had an interview with a musician Nurlan Alban and his producer Zhan Mukanov. For more than 15 years Nurlan Alban has been famous for acting as a TV presenter of different events, shows, programs and concerts. Most recently two first solo albums of Nurlan Alban has been released. They are named as “Salem” and “Karttarym, aman – saumysyn”. Nurlan plays folk rock music.
- Nurlan, please, introduce yourself.
- I was born in aul (mountain village) Tuzkul (Narynkol, Almaty region). I studied at the Republican boarding school #2 and today this school is for gifted children. Then I studied at Kazakh National Art Academy named after Zhurgenev T. Certainly, I graduated from this academy with qualification on specialty – “Film and drama actor”. Afterwards I worked as an actor in the Youth theatre for about five years. Later I continued to work in the theatre and started to sing within a musical band “Urker”.
- Could you, please, tell us about the most unforgettable moment in your artistic biography?
- This amusing and instructive episode happened during the road tour of “Urker” band in New York, in the concert hall Allen Hall. There were about 20% of Kazakh people and the rest of these people were American.
During the concert I came to sing a song on stage alone and accompanied myself playing the dombra. When I finished singing, the whole public shouted “Encore!”. I wasn’t prepared for this and I couldn’t answer anything. Perhaps, I should have prepared and tell that the next member of the band was going to come on stage with another song. But I was absolutely unprepared and it was also impossible to improvise because I didn’t know any words in English. Eventually, I got completely lost and started to look around me…And then I noticed Aidos Sagat, a manager of “Urker” band, on the backstage, and he raised his thumb finger and made it clear by nodding and gestures that I could continue singing. I sang one more song…Thus…I sang 7 songs at a run..
- Has anything new happened in your life during the last year?
- After working with the band “Urker” for 8 years I left them at the end of the last year and I have been actively doing my solo career for one year. This year I have already released 2 solo albums and we transfer the fees of selling these albums to the charity foundation “AYALA”.
- How did this idea of transferring ALL fees of selling new albums to the charity appeared? ThisquestionisforZhan.
- We have started dealing with the charity long ago, our center helped one large family; but in the course of time we realized that we need to have ‘a big sea’ – to do something and give more for people who need it. We started to search for charity foundation in Almaty and in the internet we found a long list of different public and private foundations which provide help for disadvantaged groups of people. But we made a very serious choice and conducted a small work analysis of these foundations. Eventually we chose the charity foundation “AYALA”.
- What were you guided by when choosing namely this foundation?
- By several reasons. Firstly, we found out that this foundation helps children and to a greater degree, children hospitals. Secondly, the foundation’s projects are intended to help hundreds and thousands of children. Thirdly, the foundation “AYALA” has very solid partners represented by the companies and banks that are famous in our country. Fourthly, we fully realized that the foundation’s work is totally transparent within the financial aspect.
- There is a fund-raising box for the projects of “AYALA” foundation in your center of wedding industry. How often and how much money do your customers make donations?
- I personally don’t keep a check on this but according to the words of employees; our clients often drop some money into the box. And when the customers ask what the money will be spent on, we try to tell in detail about your foundation’s work. In such a way we try to help the charity foundation “AYALA” in the development of charity culture and tradition in our country. The more people know about the work of such foundations, the more good deeds can be done by these charity foundations. Now, when we have found out even more about the foundation’s work, we will try to help you with all your work and new projects and we have definite resources for this. Apart from collecting money from the albums’ sales, box donations, we have an opportunity to help the foundation become more recognizable by placing information about it in our magazine “Wedding world”.
Thanks for the interview. We wish you and your team future creative success and prosperity to your business.
