Shortparis frontman Nikolai Komyagin has died.
The 39-year-old musician felt ill after a boxing workout – his heart gave out, the journalist reported. Ksenia Sobchak and the group manager Marina KosukhinaKomyagin was 39 years old.
"Talented, vibrant, young, and extremely original. Coming from Siberia, he conquered first St. Petersburg, then Moscow, and then all of Russia. He was passionate about Russian culture and truly loved it," Sobchak wrote on her channel.
Shortparis is an experimental music group created by contemporary artists in St. Petersburg in 2012. Stylistically, they define their work as post-pop, pop-noir, avant-pop, and position themselves in opposition to the contemporary music scene.
In February 2022, Komyagin was detained during an anti-war protest in St. Petersburg. In April 2023, Nikita Izyumov, head of the Kuban branch of the Tsargrad movement, asked Krasnodar Mayor Yevgeny Naumov to ban Shortparis from performing on the city stage for its support of Ukraine. Activists from the pro-government movement "Call of the People" supported the denunciation, appealing to the Ministry of Justice, the FSB, the Investigative Committee, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, demanding that Shortparis be investigated for "discrediting."
The band was banned from performing in Russia. But they didn't leave the country. Shortparis's final concerts took place outside of it.
"What a talented and powerful artist," "He was an incredibly talented person," "It's a shame to lose such people. They truly leave a mark on our culture," "What a nightmare! Not Nikolai," "I can't believe it, I don't want to believe it! I never got to see their concert, it was my dream," Shortparis listeners responded to the news.

