Dj Shurik

Alexander V. Smirnov was born on June 22, 1979 in the capital of Russia - Moscow. His attachment to music started since he was a 7 year old kid. Walking through a music store once, he saw an old Russian synth and asked his parents to buy one. They told that you need to know how to play one before you buy it and that was the deal.
For the first year he spent his time with private teachers trying to get the theory of what is it - to be a music student. After that he joined a day music school, where he spent 7 more years in the class of piano. During this period of his life he had to perform on a few City concerts. And after he graduated, the music school offered him a subsidized student position, to spend the 8th year in preparation for the college, finishing which he could go to conservatory. But by this time Alex had different opinion on his career.
At the age of 14 he and his friend, got his hands on to an old GEMINI dual CD player. That was a wonderful time of school discos, small private bands, first home studio. At the same time Alex is pursuing his interest in math and computers in particular. Combining this knowledge and practice, he and his friend starting their sound engineering careers. Small bands were working with them and recording their first albums. Alex along with his friend Alexey Popov were assisting on a local school performances as sound and light director. One day they had a lucky chance to meet one of the most important sound man in Russian ShowBiz industry of those days - Sergey Rostozky. He offered them a job. So Alex got a chance to work with a lot of Russian celebrities along with some popular Western projects: Scooter (Olympisky stadium), Prodigy (Red Square) e.t.c.

In October 1999 Alex is moving to United states with his Degree in Mathematic Modeling, expirience in System Administration and of course vast list of places where he had a chance to work or perform as a part of show group. He had a chance to work in most known places in Russia (Moscow, Sochi, Lazarevskoe, Rostov), Finland, Sweden, London UK (while he lived there in 1997).
The first place where he found himself was a disco-club "Podkova" which located on Lexington Ave and East 55th street in Manhattan. The local promoter Arthur R. took him as a support technician. Dj Pushkin and Dj Phill were the house DJs. After the first day, Alex spent at "Podkova" (the New Year eve 1999-2000), Dj Phill invited him on a tryout night at the Brooklyn club "Galactic". The tryout was good. Eventually Alex got a place as a home DJ at "Podkova".

Later he will produce a group of new young DJs.
Dj Scorp (Heaven Entertainment), Dj Max K(Sashas Promotions), Dj K, Dj Ruffneck.
In summer 2000 Alex, along with his friend Dj Phill and another friend, Eugene starting their own movement in the walls of "Podkova" night club. Every Wednesday and every Thursday nights. Those parties did not last long, but they were good and they brought a lot of promoters and local club owners to the list of Alex's acquaintances. Autumn fall 2000 Alex got a chance to perform at "Float", "Dramma", "Tribecca", later the same year - Tunnel. Virginia open air party of the year 2000. "KTU party on 34th street" - 2002.
During the next 6 years in US (2002-2008) the list of places have grown. He had a FedEx sponsored tour through United States: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, Arizona, Florida, Georgia.

In a year 2001 he is getting his chance to return to a music production business. Alex is getting a spot in the studio of Viktor Rjabina (L and R Productions). He assisted local producers on some very interesting projects, like working on reproducing "Linda's" songs in English for the BMG Records. One of his closest friends there is Sergej Gorodetskij - nowadays the owner of state of the art digital record studio.

One of the things we did not mention was Alex's work with Bridge Productions movie company. He was a sound director on the set during the shooting of "The Rift" movie.  Unfortunately the movie was never released, but as Alex say himself: "That was an extraordinary experience".
Presently Alex live in the upstate New York and running a small business of his own. His is cooperating with different promotion companies to work with them as a DJ for hire or a consultant. For contact information please refer to CONTACT menu option.