Anna Lesko

Biography

Her first painting found a buyer; Anna Lesko has spoken about it herself.

She was born on 10 January 1979 in Chișinău, then the capital of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, into a family of Russian and Ukrainian roots; her father, a construction engineer, is half Moldovan. Her native language is Russian. Her surname at birth was different, Lyzhychko (in Ukrainian, Anna Stepanivna Lyzhychko). From childhood she danced: first in a folk dance ensemble, which she soon left, then classical and modern dance. At seventeen, by some accounts sixteen, she came to Romania on tour with a ballet troupe. She liked the country, arranged her move and settled in Bucharest. She learned Romanian with a person who knew no Russian and, on the advice of people around her, enrolled in the law faculty: a legal career was meant to make life in the new country easier. The language difficulties were such that by some accounts she soon abandoned her studies, by others she managed to finish them.

Around then she began to paint. She was advised by the painters Sabin Bălașa and Mircea Novac; Bălașa, after looking at her work, called her a “revelation” and addressed her as “Russian girl”. She herself said that her paintings convey extremes of mood, happiness and sadness, and that she does not believe in professional criticism. Some of her works are on display in a gallery of the National Museum of Art of Romania.

In 2000 Lesko decided to turn to music. For about a year she performed with the Romanian band Direcția 5. Then, in 2002, her first single, “Ard în flăcări” (“Burning in Flames”), came out: a dynamic rhythm, Slavic motifs, some of the words in Russian. The music was written by the producer Marius Moga, and the video was directed by Andreea Păduraru. The song entered the national Romanian Top 100 at the end of the year at number 82, but it remained one of the best-known in her repertoire. In December her first album, “Flăcări”, was released. The second album, “Inseparabili”, went on sale on 28 October 2003. About five months later it was awarded a gold disc for sales of more than 35,000 copies; the award was presented on the television programme “Teo Show” on Pro TV. The next, “Pentru tine” (2004), was recorded over about three months with an eye to a rock sound, with Marian Ionescu of Direcția 5 working on it. The album itself hardly reached the charts, but the song “Nu mai am timp”, included in the reissue, rose to number ten.

Its highest position was number two: “Anicyka Maya” (late 2005) stayed there for more than a month, with Russian inflections added at the singer’s request. The song was nominated for Best Song at the MTV Romania Music Awards 2006, but the band Morandi won. The album “Ispita” also went gold, for 10,000 copies sold. In 2007 she was nominated for the same award a second time, now as best female performer, for the song “24”; the prize went to Andreea Bănică. In those years she also briefly appeared in the series “Divertis” in three episodes.

Around 2007 Lesko signed a contract with the label Cat Music and released “1001 Dorințe”. In February 2010 her fifth album, “Jocul seducției”, came out, with songs in Romanian, Russian and English, including “Balalaika”, whose video is set in a Soviet military base in a cave under a bombed city. Then came the English-language “In My Bedroom”, in a dance-house style (2010), “Get It” (2011) and “Leagănă barca” with Pavel Stratan (2013). In 2020 she released “Ivanko” with Culiță Sterp; its video has passed 24 million views on YouTube.

She designs her stage image herself: Lesko’s costumes, in which one hears motifs of Russian folk dress, are made from her sketches in the workshop of the designers Andreea and Matei Corvin. To my mind, this continues her work as a painter: she herself compared colour and fabric to a picture. In one of her first roles she dubbed Sarah in the Romanian version of the animated film “Treasure Planet” (2002).