Life & Work with Elizaveta Boldyreva of Glendale

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizaveta Boldyreva.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m born and raised in Siberia, started playing violin at 3 and that was my introduction to music which eventually led me to what I do now – music engineering and production. I moved to LA to go to school, was originally planning to study music journalism. My first semester here I enrolled in an Electronic Music class and learned about the whole tech side of things, how to record, mix, produce. Before that I only knew about classical music – acoustic instruments, music theory and literature etc and I had a very vague idea of how the process of making modern music happens. After graduating I started interning in different studios, trying to get real experience of recording, for a little while it was mostly restocking studio fridges and going on runs for whatever the artists needed. But I was just happy to be in the environment where music was happening. When I was finally trusted with recording, things started picking up. Felt like a shift happened – I got to the real fun part of the process. Since then I got to work with a lot of cool people in the studio. Then later on I learned to do live sound for concerts and I’ve been doing sound for shows and tours in addition to recording and producing

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I feel pretty lucky I’ve always had amazing mentors along the way so even when there were struggles there was always someone I could ask for advice. My main “struggle” is that my sleep schedule is a mess from doing late night recording sessions and shows but it comes with the creative profession and I do love working at night. That’s a tradeoff I can live with 🙂

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As a Russian I feel allergic to listing my accomplishments (I don’t know, is that a thing? Makes me feel like I’m bragging) but I can say I feel most proud of the work I did as a studio engineer for Dave Sitek who has been my mentor for ever. I learned pretty much everything I know about making music from him.

I am a live sound FOH engineer at Zebulon, my home base. They brought me on to the team when I was new to live sound since I was working in the studios, so I learned how to mix concerts at Zeb. I’ve mixed hundreds of awesome shows there since, I got to do sound for legends like Sun Ra Arkestra and Suzanne Ciani. While working there I started getting offers to do live sound for artists and bands on tour, so I got to go on the road, too.

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
When I first started, I bothered a lot of people. The first studio I interned at – I kept emailing the boss pretty much every day asking if he had any work I could help with and he almost never had any for me because it was a small-ish production studio and he handled most of it himself. That internship lasted 2 weeks because he basically didn’t know what to do with me haha. The second studio I tried to intern for – I emailed 2 or 3 times with my resume and when I came to the interview they told me that the reason they invited me was because I was annoying them with my emails, but they ended up giving me an internship. Then I sent a printed resume and a cover letter to the next studio because I couldn’t find their email anywhere on the web and I thought it was surely going to fail but I got a call in a few days and was hired.
And after that things got easier, my network was growing and I met Dave [Sitek] organically through a friend and ended up working for him since.
So my advice is to talk to people and try to get in the vicinity of the thing you want to do, learn whatever you can in the process, try to be useful then your network grows along the way and things just start unfolding naturally. The right people appear.

Image Credits
Victor Hernandez (main personal photo) Photo #1 (by the keyboard, vertical) Ellie Alonzo Photo #2 (by the sound board blue shirt) Daria Khovanova Photo #3 (by the keyboard horizontal) Matt Jones Photo #4 & 5 (violin) my mom Photo #6 (black and white) Ellie Alonzo