“I can’t live in luxury”

In 1980-ies Kim Breitburg was famous as the leader of the popular rock band “Dialog”. Today he is well known as the composer and the musical producer of the project “People’s a
Artist”. Almost all modern pop stars sing his songs: Philip Kirkorov, Larisa Dolina, Valeriy Leontiev, “Prime Ministr” band. And preparing to visit Kim Breitburg, we imagined the maestro surrounded by luxury silk-gold interior, at the white royal piano.
But it turned, that the famous composer lives in small but very cosy wooden house not far from Moscow. And computer with the synthesizer replace the piano to him.

-Kim Alexandrovich, it is year and the half since you started to live out of the city. Why did you decide to leave the capital?
-The point is that our Moscow flat was located in the very busy district. And it became totally impossible to live there when the construction site appeared near the house. That was why we moved to the country and we feel no regret about it. It is very calm, quite here, lots of fresh air.
Besides, this house is located not so far from Moscow – only 35 km. It takes about an hour to get the work form here. I don’t drive, thus I can think about something on the way. It is always very noisy in the studio: talks, laugh, singing. The work is boiling there and I can’t concentrate. When you drive in the car, or, more, when you are driven, it is possible to disengage yourself from everything. Franklyn speaking, my driver likes to chat, but I managed to learn to switch off from the talks: I sit and think about my actions.

-Isn’t it boring to live in the country?
-Absolutely not. Because the boredom in inside the person, not around him. I live with my wife here, and our grand children come for weekends. We have two cats: Motia and Cheeta. My wife Olga likes animals a lot. So, we probably will have a dog soon.

-Why did you choose the Kiev direction? You could build the house on prestige Rublevka or New Riga.
-Formerly, we had the country house with the good area on the edge of the forest on Novorigskoev highway. But it was rather far – 60 km.Besides, sometimes it is harder to get somewhere on Rubleka or New Riga: the road is narrow and often there are traffic jams. The Kiev highway is less busy. To that, our village is located near the road, which we can use to pass the jam. Concerning the prestige… Many famous people connected to the world of TV and show-busyness live in our village: Alexandr Gradski, Andrey Kozlov, Chris Kelmi, Boris Kruk. So I’m not the only one here.

-Why did you decide to build the wooden house?
-I see no point in moving from “concrete jungle” to stone mansion. The breathing in the wooden house is much better! Beside that, my wife always dreamed to live in the wooden house. They built the wooden houses in the middle regions of Russia from ancient times. I think there are reasons for that: the wooden house is warm in the winter and it is rather cool in the summer in it.
At first, we didn’t know whether this house would become our permanent place of living or it would stay just a country house, so there are not much furniture in it. In general, our house id very light, sunny. We cared for enough windows. At good weather it feels like the sun rays go through all the house.

-Did you invent your own design of the house or take the ready project?
-By pure accident I met the person who built about one third of all houses here. He offered some variants and we even went to see some houses, that he built, to check the quality. We liked one of the projects because it suited all our requirements. First, we wanted not very big building, we can hold without hiring the services. But still we changed a bit the chosen variant. In any case, I didn’t see similar houses anywhere. On the second floor we made the workroom for my wife, she is fond of needlework, instead of the balcony. The building was constructed as in the mirror reflection – from right to left. But, I wanted bigger area near the house. Then we could place the house far from the fence. Unfortunately, we got only 1200 square meters.

-Did you take any participation in the construction?
-Several times I came to the site to check the work. I need to pay tribute to the architect – he managed the construction very good and chose staff in the way, that every group was occupied with its separate job. Narrow specialty professional brigades worked on our house, not some jacks-of-all-trades. Due to that there were no faults in construction process. On my turn, I followed the contract completely, i.e. transferred the money in time. We didn’t urge the builders, but still they finished in term: the beginning was in March and the house was completely ready in November.

-You said, you don’t want to hire the services. So, do you manage to hold the house by your self?
-Of course, we do! The house id compact, so there is few more work than in the flat. The wife doesn’t have the vegetable garden, there is the green grass around the house, where the grand children play ball. In the summer Olga decorates the grass with the flowers in huge pots. Of course, the grass needs the periodical cut. We do that our self too. The walks with lawn-mower are even pleasant and don’t take much time. If spend an hour and a half at lawn-mower, it is possible to handle it in three days. Only in winter the yard-keeper comes to us to help remove the snow.
We don’t hire the services: it is very responsible act. We have to consider as the members of the family both the driver and the maid: they are often in the house and are up to date with family cases. We aren’t ready for that yet. Besides, it isn’t pleasant to find yourself in the situation, when you start to fell sympathy to someone, and that person suddenly go away. It is even worse to dislike someone, because still you have to say goodbye to that person and start to find another. The constant change of people fails the energetic.

-Do you take any participation in the house hold?
0I can clean my room for example. In general I can do any work. I’m not the musician-softie who can’t handle the hammer. In the house in Ukraine, where I lived with my family earlier, I made many things with my own hands. Practically by my self I repaired the pipes, and it worked good and didn’t leak.
The current house didn’t managed to cause any troubles yet. It is rather new and there were no failures in it. There is a two year guarantee on this house and in the case the specialists will come and fix everything. The infrastructure is good in the village. In Moscow you can wait the mechanic from the exploitation office for the whole day, and he will appear only when you fixed everything by our self or in the case of some catastrophe and the lower floors were damaged. Local mechanics and electricians come at first call at any time of day or night.

-Who designed the interiors?
-We didn’t invite decorators. And we paid absolutely no attention to the style of the interior. Gradually everything took its places. We are rather ascetic people and can’t live in luxury, we didn’t used to it. In youth I had no time for family nest development, because I always was on the tour trip – with the band “Dialog” I traveled almost all around the world. Because of that, half of my life was spent in hotels, planes and trains. The family traveled with me till the children started to go to school. We moved like Gypsies: the kitchen was in one bag, the bedroom was in another, and the toys were in third. My daughter Masha even had flat dolls, that it was more convenient to pack them. And, most likely, we kept such slighting attitude to house conditions for all life. The most important thing in place of living for us is the cleanness and convenience. We don’t need the house we can boast in front of our friends and neighbors. Especially, when only close friends visit us. They value us, I hope, not on our things, but on our self.

-Still, how can you characterize your interior?
-Rural style, probably. All the furniture is simple from pine, the walls are decorated with patch pictures, which were made by my wife(she is fond of patchwork art). But she gives as presents the majority of her creations. Recently she laced the big carpet on the theme of Russian fairy tales for the birthday of the grand son. But some of her works stay in here.
There is the “cat” collection on the kitchen, it is managed by the wife too. All friends and relatives present Olga the statues of cats, which she arranges on the kitchen shelves. The is few place left, so the collection starts to “move” to walls and window-sills.
In general, our interior is simple, without any excess. We care only about cosiness and warm of the house. For that we even made floors with heating in some rooms! But we got used and walk in slippers. But at the same time, children run on bare foots and play with the cats on the floor.

-Do you consider your self a family man?
-Yes, I spend lost of time among my relatives. My working schedule isn’t strict so I went to Moscow not every day. Usually, I visit the studio three-four times a week and all other time I devote to the family or house hold. Though at home I work in my cabinet, composing and making demo-records. I arranged the mini-studio there, there is the electronic piano and the laptop. The modern hi-tech went so far that the whole studio goes in one notebook.

-Why didn’t you place the real royal piano?
-The “live” instrument demands constant tuning. I have absolute pitch, and the perfectly tuned piano is necessary for me. But there is no such reliable piano. The synthesizer is electronic machine, it tunes as I want. Besides the synthesizer is convenient for the recording: I can play or sing something up on it and transfer the demo right into the computer. And it is hard to record the “live” instrument home conditions.

-You have rich experience of living in the country. How do you think, what is the most important in choosing of the house?
-If the house is intended to be the permanent place of living, then it depends of the amount of trips to the city, the roads and it quality. But always you shall decide on your own feelings.
When we saw the place for the first time, there was nothing on it, only flowers and bushes. We imagine that the site could be divided on sunny and shadow areas. Besides, it was the only free site on the street. Probably, it was waiting for us. When coming to plain place, you need to imagine the living on it. That moment you need to listen to your self, and feel weather it would be comfortable or not. You just need to stand, to listen and to feel a bit.

“Square meter” #16(224), Maria Makalina