I studied to be a historian-sinologist at the university for three years. At the same time, I studied choral conducting at a musical college. My parents are musicians: my father is a trombonist, my mother is a theorist. Music has been in my life since I was a child. So, my professional choice was to some extent predetermined, however, I made the final decision as an adult person.

There is no routine in musicAeterna and there are certain requirements to the way we work. Without love for musical material, it is impossible to stay in rehearsals for eight hours, to parse a musical phrase with such attention to detail. I have never seen this approach anywhere else, neither in Russia nor abroad. I am sure that only with this approach it is possible to achieve a high-quality result. I saw the musicAeterna choir for the first time during a rehearsal. I came to the audition, and the choir was preparing a composition by Alexey Sioumak. Even then, during the rehearsal, I saw how carefully Vitaly Polonsky worked and how alert and deeply involved in the process each member of the choir was. The sound quality and the selection of voices were immediately noticeable.

I take a sports bike with me on almost all tours. Between rehearsals, I looked at Versailles, Amsterdam, Rome on wheels. It's faster and more interesting to get to know the city this way. In addition to cycling, I am fond of volleyball and have gathered a team with colleagues. We play both on tour and in St Petersburg. In the photo, we are after the match with the Yurlov Capella Choir.

I listen to a lot of modern jazz. Now these are mostly recordings by the Nizhny Novgorod trio LRK. In my 'favourite' selection there are Sergei Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil performed by the Swedish Radio Choir conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste. This is a pedantic and very musical interpretation with great attention to the author's recommendations which Rachmaninoff gave himself.