Vitaliy I.V.A.

Vitaliy I.V.A. is a rare case in the handpan community, where a person is known not only for his studio audio recordings and performances at various concert venues and festivals, but also as a gifted tuner and craftsman.

His journey into the world of singing steel began in 2008 thanks to a YouTube video featuring Davide Swarup. In 2011, by happy circumstances, due to his own intuition and a series of serendipitous meetings with creative people in St. Petersburg, Vitaliy was fortunate to join the first Russian handpan workshop, Pantam Spb, as an employee, led by Victor Levinson himself.

As a musician, Vitaliy finds inspiration in the beauty of ordinary moments of everyday life, in other people, and in traveling. Being an attentive listener and a sensitive, curious person, he reflects his feelings and emotions through the music. Inspiration is everywhere! Landscapes, for example: Vitaliy used many toponymics of his Homeland as names for the tracks on his debut musical album, "Hyperborean Dreams" (2013).

Vitaliy started to play the handpan in public in 2011 as a street musician. He step-by-step developed his skills and style during hundreds of street performances between 2011 and 2013. He pays tribute to beautiful melodies, swinging grooves, syncopated rhythms, and the space between the sounds—the silence itself.

At different times, he participated in collaborative creative projects and performed on the same stage with artists such as Long Arm, Animal Jazz, Aya Pacha, Kabecao, Nadishana, Max Ananyev, Protogroup, Andrei Jasinski, Kirill Osherov, Davide Swarup, and many others.

As a craftsman, Vitaliy has been associated with steel for many years, having deep experience in metallurgy. Born beyond the Arctic Circle on the border of Russia and Norway, in the very city where the deepest borehole in human history was drilled (the Kola Superdeep Borehole), he worked in mining and industrial production. He witnessed how metal-containing ores are extracted and saw metal smelting with his own eyes in the smelting shop.

As a tuner, Vitaliy calls himself a student of Anton Zakharov (Siberia Sound Sculptures). While Vitaliy constantly improves his skills, he earns well-deserved respect among colleagues and gratitude from his happy clients all over the world. Vitaliy also worked in China for five years and, for the last year, has been based in the coastal area of South Vietnam with his chamber project, Vetra Pantam.