Singer Valeria is the creative mononym of Alla (Valeria) Yuryevna Perfilova (Prigozhina), a famous Russian pop singer who began her career back in the USSR, People's Artist of the Russian Federation. She first married in 1987 at the age of 19 to Leonid Yaroshevsky, who two years before the wedding took her into his ensemble and promised to help with admission to the Gnesins Institute.
Biography of Leonid Yaroshevsky
Leonid Yaroshevsky is known as a composer and arranger, jazz pianist and saxophonist. Born in 1960 in the city of Saratov, in a family of circus performers.
In 1981, Leonid graduated from the Saratov School of Music with a degree in choir and conducting. During his studies he played the flute and saxophone in the amateur jazz-rock ensemble "Reflection" together with the future creator of "Combination" Vitaly Okorov.
In 1980 he took part in a jazz festival held in Saratov, but did not distinguish himself in anything special. He entered the conservatory, but did not finish his studies there.
In 1982 he created and headed the Impulse quartet, which played jazz-rock. In parallel, since 1983, he worked at the Saratov Philharmonic.
In those years, Leonid was an intelligent and polite young man with glasses in the latest fashion, with long curly hair.
During his studies at the Saratov School of Music, he met Svetlana Terentyeva, a classmate with whom he fell in love, and who became his first wife. Leonid lived with Svetlana for 4 years in the apartment of Leonid's grandmother. Shortly before meeting the future singer Valeria, the couple divorced. The official reason for the separation is the numerous infidelities on the part of Terentyeva, her pregnancy and a forced abortion.
Acquaintance and life with Valeria
In 1985, Alla Perfilova (future singer Valeria) performed at the Saratov House of Culture, at the competition of vocal and instrumental ensembles. At this competition, Leonid, who was looking for a soloist for his quartet, heard the voice of the tenth grader Alla.
Soon after that, Yaroshevsky arrived in the Perfilovs' hometown of Aktarsk, sought out the young talent and invited Alla to participate in his ensemble. Convinced her parents, promising all kinds of help when entering the Gnessin Moscow Academy of Music.
After receiving Alla's consent, he takes her to Saratov, arranges a job at the Saratov Philharmonic. In parallel with this work, Alla acts as a soloist in the "Impulse" ensemble under the guidance of her husband. The group even took part in the competition of vocal and instrumental ensembles in Jurmala. But Alla was in for a complete failure on it: she sang in a jazz style, and the members of the jury were more than cool about jazz.
After Alla entered Gnesinka at the correspondence faculty, he offered to move to live with him. Two years later, Leonid and 18-year-old Alla became husband and wife. The wedding was more than modest, in an apartment. Of the guests - only parents and familiar musicians. Solemn registration took place at the Saratov Wedding Palace.
Immediately after the wedding, they got a prestigious job in a restaurant. From the fees paid, they began to save money for the purchase of a car. But instead they decided to rush to Moscow.
If in her native Saratov Alla Perfilova was a famous performer, then in Moscow I had to start everything from scratch. Alla first worked in the erotic show "Stop AIDS!" The eroticism, however, was that the girls sang in miniskirts. Except for one, an acrobat and a gymnast who performed topless with a hoop.
After some time, a friend of Yaroshevsky's Vitaly Okorov put together a women's group "Combination" and invited Alla to participate in it. Alla was then disappointed with the group's repertoire, as well as the fact that she would not be the soloist in the group. Therefore, the singer refused.
New impetus for development
In 1991, Alla was singing in the capital's Taganka Blues bar in front of its drunken visitors, when suddenly an attractive and respectable young man approached her. His name was Alexander Shulgin, her future second husband. He offered Alla cooperation: she sings, he unwinds her.
Since 1991, Alla Perfilova has a creative pseudonym Valery. Together with Shulgin, who had previously had production experience with the rock group "Cruise", Valeria went to Germany to record her first album. While working on it, Valeria and Alexander quarreled strongly, so they returned to their homeland separately. But upon arrival in Moscow, they quickly reconciled.
Soon Valeria began to meet with Shulgin, staying overnight with him. Shulgin quickly promoted Valeria as a singer: she had recitals, tours, albums, fans. Alexander became a new impulse for her development.
While nothing of this happened with Yaroshevsky: they lived in a room with cockroaches, cheap provincial hotels, constantly moved and Leonid, apparently, liked everything. In any case, he did nothing to somehow change the situation.
The history of relations with Yaroshevsky is over. According to Valeria, her first husband was her biggest love and biggest mistake in her life. In 1993 Valeria and Leonid Yaroshevsky officially divorced. The divorce went quietly and peacefully, without explanation.
In 1991, when Valeria first cheated on Leonid and he found out about it, he was very upset. So he got drunk and tried to commit suicide by drinking a handful of the first pills that came along. At that time he was rescued.
Immediately after the divorce, Yaroshevsky went to work abroad in Vienna, the capital of Austria. In 2003 he moved to Germany permanently. All these years, up to 2011, Leonid toured with the Bolschoi Don Kosaken Choir Orchestra.
He currently works in the German city of Bonn as a pianist at the Bristol Hotel. In 2016, he released an e-book "Valeria" Parovoz "from Atkarsk", dedicated to the memories of the years spent with Alla Perfilova together.
