[7] After graduating school Nina couldn't decide which college to go to, so Arkady Shatsky sent her to a settlement near an agricultural factory to work there for a year as a club administrator.

[11] She moved to the Moscow Music Hall and studied vocals at Gnesyn Academy, in the class of Natalya Andrianova,[12] while also making miscellaneous recordings with orchestras for Soviet TV and radio.

At the height of the Mikhail Gorbachev-induced 'economic crimes fighting' campaign Arkady Shatsky was arrested and sentenced to five years of hard labour for alleged financial wrongdoings.

Shatsky never denied the fact that he had to use all of his entrepreneurial abilities to provide the band with the best equipment and modern instruments (like synthesizers), in the times when such items had to be 'procured' at black markets rather than legally bought.

Many 'prominent' Rybinsk men who'd always been proud to have us as friends were now avoiding us... Our flat was searched and turned upside down: they hoped to find a large sum of hidden money, apparently, but only found the huge vinyl record collection which was my father's one and only item of luxury.

[11] Shatskaya's repertoire changed after she met Zlata Razdolina, a Saint Petersburg composer experimenting with the modern Russian romance genre.

[16] Shatskaya's debut album The Game of Love (2000, part of The Golden Mine of Romance series) later provided the title for an expansive concert project with the Russian Orchestra, directed by Boris Voron.

[19] The album's material, arranged starkly for piano and voice, was premiered at the Moscow International House of Music, accompanied by Natalya Bayurova.

[22] In early 2009 Shatskaya released her sixth album Zephir, describing it as "romanso-jazz", or "romances in jazz arrangements but in keeping with this genre's rules, without any improvisations.

"[11] Later in 2009 the album Sorceress was released, a collection of Zlata Razdolina's romances based on Anna Akhmatova's poetry and arranged for Sergei Skripka's orchestra by Dmitry Userdov.

[11] That same year she was awarded the Order of the Sergei Diaghilev Foundation "for contribution to and development of Russian culture", specifically for the Akhmatova song cycle.

[24] In October 2010 the poetry-and-music theatre production Remembering the Sun (Память о солнце, originally titled Sorceress) was premiered at the Moscow House of Music.

Directed by Yulia Zhenova and based on Anna Akmatova's poetry (with music written by Zlata Razdolina) it featured Nina Shatskaya and actress Olga Kabo, "two of nature's elements, two unique women... recreating images of the long lost past, when love was sacrificial and for a woman a dream of happiness was something impossible and doomed," according to the press release.

[25][26] On May 24, 2011, the extended version of Shatskaya's From Romance to Jazz concert program was presented at the International Moscow House of Music, coinciding with the re-issue of Zephir by Melodia and featuring Olga Kabo, composer Aleksander Pokidchenko and pianist Yuri Rozum as guest performers.

[14] After meeting her back stage at a private party, Panfilov wondered if she was familiar with an obscure romance called Evening Ends (Уходит вечер).

She cited Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Lara Fabian, Diana Krall and Norah Jones as her favourite artists, as well as Elena Obraztsova, whom in her formative years she regarded 'a goddess'.

Teatral magazine described the singer as "a lonely traveller on a thorny path… Devoted to the Romance, she is not widely popular, but she's formed her own, intelligent and intellectual audience," the critic wrote.

[23] Italian photographer Franko Vitale, best known for his collaborations with Fellini, came to Russia in the late 1980s and fell in love with Nina Shatskaya, then a Mosconcert[29] singer.

"This 'lack of love' does upset me, yes, but one has to agree that feisty, energetic and emotional men are very few, while others bore me," she remarked in one interview, adding: "In relationships I prefer to keep my distance.

"[11] Nina Shatskaya's list of hobbies include exotic traveling, diving and photography; her works were lauded by the Russian Geographical Society.