VALENTINE HALEMBAKOV (VAL HAL)
(Guitars on ‘Forgive Me, My Son’)
“I joined UPF because of this powerful community of fellow musicians, that is very rare nowadays. Everything and everyone seems distanced from each other, using their smart devices and posting likes and dislikes on a daily basis. With UPF we can say a word to the world with the help of beautiful music and keep that connection between humans alive.”
Valentine Halembakov (Val Hal) was born on August 27, 1985 in Tyumen city (Russia, West Siberia). Being a Bulgarian by birth, Valentine travelled in his childhood very often and even lived some years in Sofia (Bulgaria).
He was involved in music early; when he was 7 years old he started taking vocal lessons in “Pioneer” choral studio under the leadership of Vladimir Embayev.
Vocal lessons were successful up to age 15 when his voice began to change and he decided to switch to guitar. “Still being a child, while visiting friends I saw a guitar, and at once fell in love with this musical instrument. But then, I faced a small problem: it was inconvenient for me to keep a guitar in a habitual position as I was a lefthander. So I turned it, rearranged the strings and since then I have been a left-handed guitar player”.
‘Steel Fusion’ was Val Hal’s first music project where the band played various covers including Al Di Meola, who is one of Val Hal’s greatest guitar heroes. In 2006 Valentine became the winner of the Regional musical Note-2006 musical festival. In 2010 Valentine was the winner of the IV Russian musical competition “Debyut-Priznaniye 2010”.
In the same year Val Hal finished studying guitar in Tyumen National Academy of Culture and Arts (Bachelor of Music, specializing in Conducting and Music Education – Guitar). In 2005 – 2011 years there was a cooperation with PsychoDynamism, a thrash’n’art and progressive metal band.
The group successfully proved itself at various concert and rock clubs of Tyumen city, where “PsychoDynamism”acted together with the Arkhangelsk monsters of instrumental rock, “Blind Vandal” and the St. Petersburg Christian rock band “Druzhki”.
On April 21, 2011 PsychoDynamism performed a big solo concert at the Tyumen Drama Theater. They became the first rock group ever to perform in this hall.
Valentine is also rather known in music sphere of Tyumen; he was a member of various collectives — Hit Box cover band, acoustic folk group New Castle Trio and many others. He also proved himself as a session musician and the guitar teacher in “Romantic Sound” studio.
Now he conducts private teaching activity at his own online studio – Val Hal Studio. The “Spirit Inside” band was created by Valentine in 2011 and existed only as a solo project (sessional musicians were attracted for various concerts).
Later, this became the “Val Hal” project. In 2011 Valentine met the famous Belarusian musician Oleg “Jagger” Minakov (Rouble Zone band, the “Prospect”, the “Inspector”, Moonshine band). At this time, Oleg acquainted the him with another equally famous Russian musician, Konstantin “Kokha” Shustarev, the vocalist and the leader of the Russian rock band named Pushking Community (http://www.pushking.ru).
Valentine auditioned for the role of guitarist in Pushking (December, 2011), but due to circumstances, cooperation with the group stopped. A bit later, with help of Konstantin Shustarev, Val Hal became acquainted with famous Russian musician, rock vocalist, composer and arranger Alexander Grata (August, Grata, Sixth Sense) with whom Val Hal has collaborated up to the present time on some interesting musical projects, one of which — Voices of Babylon, and many solo projects, as guest guitar solo on latest Alex Grata album, and cover project MonstArs Inc.
In June, 2013 Valentine performed on in the “The Voice 2” project in Russia. In the summer of 2014 he travelled to the USA to take vocal lessons in the legendary studio of Brett Manning in Nashville (Singing Success).
He was also taught by Jason Catron for a while (USA, Brett Manning Studios, Los Angeles). In the same summer Val Hal shot video footage in New York for his own composition “Brown-eyed girl”. The director of the clip was Patrick Ryan Morris, a famous New York director. Video production was done at DEDALUS MOVING PICTURES, USA, NY studio.
In January, 2015 Val Hal moved to Moscow as a Music Specialist Teacher, invited by International School of Moscow. On March 13, 2015 he performed his first solo program — an official premiere of the music video composition “Brown-eyed girl”. Among special guests who appeared on one stage together with Val Hal, were famous Moscow guitarists Anton Tsygankov (Discoteka Avariya, D&A, Tornado Classic) and Max Zorin (Olga Kormukhina’s band, Velvet group).
In March of 2015 Val Hal took part in the international guitar competition Jam Track Central Solo Contest 2015 in the Rock nomination category. In April, 2015 Val Hal wrote a new composition named “Snake under the Stone”.
Very soon shooting of the clip and release of the vocal version of this composition is expected. Also, in April and August 2015 some solo concerts of Val Hal passed in his hometown — Tyumen.
In 2016 Val Hal did a new version of his song “Symphony of Hope” with guest vocalist – Nikita Pozdnyakov (The Voice of Russia, Season 1, Black Rocks Band, Eurovision 2015), in result they did a video for this song.
Later on, in August 2016, Val Hal took part in big project – a Russian Flash Mob of more than 100 guitarist and cellists with very special guests on stage – Steve Vai & Apocalyptica, which took place in Moscow, Green Theatre, VDNKH. Together they played two songs: “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin and Steve Vai’s “Flash Mob”.
