Background
Marina Gordon was born on December 11, 1917 in Minsk, Belarus.
Marina Gordon was born on December 11, 1917 in Minsk, Belarus.
In 1940 she was granted the option to continue her vocal training at the Glazunov College of Theatre and Music in Moscow, where she graduated from in 1946.Meanwhile, she was accepted as a soloist to the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics State People’s Orchestra.
She has been known as a performer of popular songs written to lyrics by contemporaneous authors in Yiddish, Russian, and (Belarusian) in the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics and in the United States of America.
At the age of 16, she was accepted into the vocal studio of the Minsk Opera House. Thereafter, she continued studies at the Minsk Conservatory. During the World World War II she got enlisted first into the militia, than drafted into the Soviet Army to perform in military arts ensembles for Soviet troops.
After the World World War II she was a soloist of the Moscow Variety Shows Enterprise.
Upon retiring, she immigrated to the United States in 1977. Gordon died on December 13, 2013 in New New York
Marina Gordon was performing mostly contemporaneous Russian and Belorussian songs, premiering many works by once highly celebrated Soviet composers like Isaac Dunayevsky, Yuri Milyutin, the Pokrass Brothers. In 1956 she participated in a Jewish concert, the first to be allowed by Soviet authorities since the infamous "Night of the Murdered Poets".
Marina Gordon performed a selection of songs composed to verses by contemporaneous Yiddish poets lived in the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Since then she championed a similar repertoire created by composers Lev Pulver, Lev Yampolsky, Samuel Polonsky, Rebecka Boyarska, Samuel Senderey and others
She was giving solo performances and was participating in concerts featuring music, poetry and drama by Yiddish actors Leah and Joseph Kolins. She made numerous recordings of contemporary Jewish songs. Her last two Albums were recorded in collaboration with concertmaster – pianist David Ashkenazi (the father of the legendary Vladimir Ashkenazi) and the Soviet State Broadcast People’s Orchestra under direction of Vladimir Terletsky.