Daler Nazarov live: a small circle of musicians and old friends

On 16 March 2016 Daler Nazarov played the Digital October centre in Moscow, his first performance in Russia in six years. He said he wanted to play the songs in their simplest form, without elaborate arrangements. All the songs are about love, he explained, so he would not translate them, and he only summarised a few of the lyrics.

A small circle of people worked beside him on stage. Shavkmamad Pulodov sang maddo and had already appeared at Daler's Moscow concert in 2010. Andrey Tanzyu played a frame drum. Nazarov's son Abror played guitar and by then had recorded a first solo album. The core of the ensemble was musicians aged twenty-two and twenty-three who had joined Daler six to eight years earlier. The hall received "Mastam" with particular warmth. The evening ended with "Ey pari" from the 1979 film and a new song on a Hafiz text.

Some songs that night had an Almaty connection. Nazarov sang "Ey juray jon" there in 2006 with Batyrkhan Shukenov, the lead singer of A-Studio. The two became friends in the 1990s, after Daler left Tajikistan, and the friendship lasted until Shukenov's death. Another long-time collaborator, the singer Muboraksho Mirzoshoyev, joined Nazarov's group in 1988. That year Yormahmad Aralev's film Kumir came out. Nazarov played the pop singer Khurshed in it, and he and Mirzoshoyev share the music credit. Radio Ozodi names Mirzoshoyev, Nobovar Chanorov and Nargis Bandishoeva as pupils of "Daler's school."

Nazarov has worked with film directors for decades. Davlat Khudonazarov brought him into Yunosti pervoe utro, and Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov invited him to Luna Papa, Shik and Tanker Tango. Nazarov says a film composer dissolves into the picture, while a concert reveals the performer's personality.

Live sound matters to him. He criticises the widespread use of backing tracks and prefers small halls: a big stage, he says, belongs to the young, and he wants to feel the listeners breathe. Every concert, he says, is unrepeatable.

On 15 April 2024 he performed at the Turkiston Art Palace in Tashkent. According to Afisha.uz, the hall held longtime fans who grew up on his songs and younger listeners. Nazarov said the concert turned out better than he had expected: simple, warm, with the audience close to the stage. He remembered his late friend Ravshan Namozov, an Honored Artist of Uzbekistan who had helped at earlier Tashkent concerts, and said he is glad when Uzbek singers perform Tajik songs and Tajik audiences sing Uzbek ones. On 8 June 2025, the second day of The Spirit of Tengri festival, he played on Abai Square in Almaty.