RAUSHAN ORAZBAEVA

RAUSHAN ORAZBAEVA is an outstanding artist playing the KYL KOBYZ and teaching at the Kazakh National University of Arts in Astana/Kazakhstan. She has played in a number of concert halls, has worked as a soloist in the folk music ensemble under the President Orchestra of the Republic of Kazakhstan and had the honor to play the kui “Akku” in front of Pope II, when he visited Kazakhstan in 2001. She has a repertoire of works by famous Kazakh Composers such as Korkyt, Ikhlas, Tattimbet, Sugyr, Zhappas and Aktoty Raimkulova, as well as many others, and she is also interpreting and improvising KUIs for Dombra on the KYL KOBYZ in her own and special way, like Nurgisa Tlendyiev’s kui “Akku”. In addition she plays her own compositions like the kuis “Arda” and “Altynbek”. Recently she has published her first teaching-book with playing instructions, sheet-notes and a CD, AKKULAR SAZI, which means Swan Melodies.

RAUSHAN ORAZBAEVA was born into a family of Kuishi-Zhyrau, of Dombra-Players and Story-Tellers in Zhanakorgan station of the Kyzylorda region in Kasakhstan. Her father Zhumabek was a Kuishi, a Poet and a Zhirshi, which means he made musical instruments (Dombras and KYL KOBYZ). First her father taught her to play the Dombra and in 1983 sent her to the music school named after Ahmet Zhubanov in Almaty, where she became a KYL KOBYZ-student of A. Zhumabekuli.

After finishing school in 1991 she entered the Kazakh National Kurmangazi Conservatory, was sent to postgraduate studies in 1996 and finished them in 1999. While studying at school and also afterwards she has been the winner of many Republican and International competitions.

Over the last years RAUSHAN ORAZBAEVA became more and more popular to foreign listeners, who unconsciously feel the connection between her play and the Great Spirits. People organize concerts for her, even in churches, as well as in public places, and she gave master-classes and concerts in the USA, in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and has, among other projects with the Aga Khan Music Initiative, performed at Sufi-Festivals in Rajastan and in Marokko.

RAUSHAN ORAZBAEVA is one of the most impressive KYL KOBYZ-players of our time. The way she plays radiates the magical power, which Kazakh ancestors put in an instrument when they held it. The instrument sounds like a living being in her hands, she makes it “speak”, and it represents the richness of people’s souls and of the colors of this world.