Metropolitan Mikhail. Mikhail Mitropolsky about “Master-Jam Fest”

(notes about the Master-Jam Fest,
which started in 2013)

Einstein was once asked how discoveries are made.
- Very simple. Everyone knows that this is impossible to do. By chance there is one ignoramus who does not know this. “He makes the discovery,” the scientist answered.

The Odessa jazz festival Master-Jam, unusual, having a strange format and not constrained by geographical boundaries, was not only born, but also made an impression that immediately brought it to international spaces. The final part of the festival took place in early June and was a success that, it seems, no one expected. The experiment, staged in Odessa by the author of the idea and producer Mikhail Freidlin and his team, initially looked absolutely fantastic. Even the creator himself, periodically returning to this topic for ten years, did not fully believe in the feasibility of this idea. A lover of jazz and the jam session form, he dreamed of constructing global jam , which would serve as the basis for a competitive competition of musicians. main idea This experiment lies in the fact that its participants, placed in rather exotic competitive conditions, in a state of time pressure must combine their thoughts and feelings with unfamiliar partners and create a work of art. The limitations in this process are small and consist only in very roughly set stylistic boundaries and in the time period during which these newly created works must be heard to the public.

The first test flight took place. It has been a long time since I saw such incredible joy and felt the feeling of unity with others that arose during the festival not only in the hall, but also on the street in front of the Russian academic theater, continuing later in retellings to friends, in numerous photographs and Internet posts that united the public and musicians. In essence, this is exactly what the concert organizers are striving for, something that has not happened at such festivals for a long time. It doesn’t happen for various reasons, of which I would mention two. Those who follow the development of jazz in the world have largely lost faith that in their homeland (either in Russia or Ukraine) they will be able to witness this world-class concerts, especially with the participation of local musicians. Information coming from the Internet, recordings, personal visits to foreign festivals - all this is a sufficient basis for such mistrust. As for the general public, there are plenty of offers designed for undemanding tastes. This applies to standard festivals, but was especially clearly manifested in a series of show programs “about jazz” on one of the Russian channels, claiming to reflect “cultural” processes.” I think that most of these actions are away from true jazz.

In Odessa, this snobbish attitude was completely broken. The effect of this festival-competition was completely unexpected. The creative efficiency of the participants reached a level that rarely occurs at festivals regular format. The “Master Jam” mechanism worked to create creative environment, in which many musicians revealed unexpected sides. What was important here was not the picture, not the rating, and not the embodiment of the illiteracy of television producers, but the music. She was not only born, but also showed hidden capabilities in randomly, by lot, created ensembles, discovered several amazing musical heroes, which will be discussed for a long time, and raised the whole hall in delight, along with the outwardly calm, but no less emotional members of the jury.

However, now in order. The idea of ​​the festival-competition, conceived ten years ago, really did not fit into the usual ideas about the festival. A normal festival is a showcase, a cross-section of modern (or not so modern, depending on the preferences of the organizers) jazz, it is a parade of ensembles from different countries, taking place at several venues, over several days (sometimes quite many days), the creation of infrastructure, including hotels, catering, trade in paraphernalia, etc. There must be one or more headliners, which, in fact, is where the public goes. This is a large jazz showcase where the “product” is presented. “Master-Jam” did not provide a finished “product”. It had to arise during the festival itself. What if not, what if it doesn’t arise? Quite a risky undertaking. On the other hand, this is a competition in which musicians must be evaluated by some kind of jury. Jazz is a system of constantly generating, seething individualities. These are not athletes achieving goals, seconds, meters. These are not even academic musicians, dancers, who can be assessed according to the criteria of a “school”. Jazz musician has the right to neglect school (examples are known even among the recognized pillars of jazz). How to evaluate them and compare them with each other? Finally, how to attract the public to all this, which rightly demands entertainment at its own expense?..

All these questions did not at all bother the famous economist, jazz lover and long-time producer of the Odessa Jazz Carnival, Moscow Odessa resident Mikhail Freidlin. They were not so embarrassed that, having patented the idea and the proposed mechanism of his dream, having assembled a small team of assistants and enlisting the formal support (precisely formal, since there was no required level of faith in the success of this business) of a certain number of reputable people in jazz, in 2012 he brought this mechanism into action.

Practically whole year There was an online selection of musicians who were to meet in an in-person session in Odessa. More than two hundred and seventy musicians from 41 countries submitted audiovisual entries. The recordings and clips were watched by the public and the selection team. Each stage and step was scrupulously reported to the Internet community in a more or less intrusive form, so it was almost impossible not to pay attention to the process. Changing ratings of participants, events within the festival process, which lasted for 9 months, accompanying events (concerts, anniversaries, exhibitions) - all this created a certain tension, the culmination of which was to take place in early June in Odessa. By this time, a “festival village” had been prepared for participating musicians and jury members arriving from all over the world (from Cuba to Indonesia, 16 countries in total), non-competitive concerts, master classes, and exhibitions. On the very first day, or rather evening, the gears of the very Master-Jam Fest mechanism, which Mikhail Freidlin defined as “Know-how,” began to spin. Five representatives of 8 main instruments and one non-standard, additional one (in this case, flute, darbuka and harmonica) were to be drawn into a single ensemble, meet the next day in the rehearsal room, get acquainted in an hour and a half and rehearse a program of three themes - two from different jazz styles plus a composition - for an evening performance with a time limit of 30 minutes. In addition, they had to rehearse for a performance on the final day as part of a national big band. The next day, this whole whirlwind began all over again, and so on for three days. The fourth day was no easier - a large orchestra department, in which the jury members seemed to compete with each other, Anatoly Kroll from Moscow, Nikolai Goloshchapov from Odessa and Andrey Machnev from Rostov-on-Don presented their programs with the combined orchestra. And then there was the performance of the laureates’ ensemble, which received about 15–20 minutes of intermission time to prepare the program. I think that after all these 43 musicians could continue their careers, for example, in the cosmonaut corps.

I won’t describe the performances themselves, the heroes of every day, a lot has been written about this, video recording of all concerts can be seen on the Internet (by the way, online video broadcast to the whole world was also provided). Just some notes. The first impression of the first evening is that the somewhat skeptical jury looks around the almost full theater hall with surprise. There is not a single “star name” on the poster, where are the people from? This “almost” disappeared in the following days. Word of mouth worked, the hall filled up, and on the final day they asked for extra tickets on the surrounding streets. The next shock is amazing high level speeches. Of course, experience, talent, sense of form, style, instrumentalism, musicality, and finally, level artistic taste everyone has a different one. But there were no bad people unprepared for such a test. It was interesting to observe how, during the festival days, the level of some musicians changed before our eyes and they adapted to new musical conditions. This is exactly what happened to the trumpet player from Belarus. Just as the capabilities of some participants were gradually revealed, for me this process was clearly manifested in the playing of the Greek guitarist and Odessa pianist. How, among musicians with significantly different experiences (there are no age restrictions in the competition), clear leaders emerged who took charge of the entire ensemble. First of all, he is an American saxophonist and Cuban pianist. Some transformations in attitudes towards musicians are interesting - an African-American musician from Denmark was in the vocal category, was at first not fully accepted in this capacity, then he discovered a certain virtuosity, playing the steelpan instrument, which was not familiar to everyone, and on the last day of the festival he began to sing so that the audience did not listen for a long time. could return to a sitting position. It was a hurricane of musicality, mastery of sound and mood.

There were several musicians in the competition, young musicians at that, who put even the experienced jury members into a kind of uncontrollable state of delight. For me, the first place here was a vocalist from Odessa, who now lives in Germany, where she continues to study, and a magnificent Cuban drummer. As for jazz vocals, in our part of the world there are known issues. Tamara Lukasheva, having discovered excellent abilities in different styles from swing to modern original music, in different genres from ballads to the coolest rhythm and blues, showed that we can look at the future of our vocals with optimism. Finally, an absolutely fantastic 9-year-old boy from Indonesia created an absolute sensation and deservedly received the Grand Prix. No one has ever understood how this child is not only fluent in a whole range of styles, is fluent with the keyboard, but also reacts with great humor to the musical suggestions of his ensemble partners, who were slightly stunned by such a reaction, and, left alone, improvises a very difficult ballad deeply, thoughtfully, as if in his nine-year life he had not only felt the 70-year experience of his mentor Herbie Hancock, but also re-read with special attention several volumes of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Yes, this first Competition had its minor shortcomings, but where would we be without it? There was some confusion in the assignment of styles for performance; genres were inadvertently included in them; the musicians calmly moved away from these designations, and the jury did not particularly pay attention to this. There were problems with the placement of instruments on stage and, accordingly, with the scoring, there were minor shortcomings with the regulations and the conduct of concerts. But these are all little things that are easy to fix.

But the main thing cannot be corrected: a new, unparalleled form of jazz communication between musicians and the public was born in Odessa. This form won a lot of points at once, it is a clear success. This success needs to be developed and continued, going beyond the borders of Odessa, Ukraine, and into the world. Perhaps this first time the organizers were lucky with talented participants who were ready to take risks and sacrifice to achieve the goal. Or perhaps this success was the result of that very new approach to the form of jazz performance that had been incubated for so many years. Let's look, and not only look, but also do everything possible to turn this mechanism into a “perpetual motion machine” that never stops.

Mikhail Mitropolsky

Mikhail Mitropolsky- Jazz columnist, radio and television presenter. Member of the Moscow and International Jazz Journalists Association (JJA). For about 40 years he has been researching jazz music and borderline musical phenomena. A physicist by training, a researcher at the Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1978, lectures on the history and stylistics of jazz at Moscow College musical improvisation, since that time he has been conducting numerous jazz concerts and festivals in different cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Lithuania.

Since 1989, author of radio programs on various Moscow radio stations: “Mayak”, “Youth”, “Vozrozhdenie”, “Radio 101”, “Open Radio”, “Solo for Jazz” programs on radio “Nadezhda” and “Moscow Speaks”, from 1999 to the present time he has been conducting the program “ Infinite Approach"on "Radio Russia", which broke the rigid connection with jazz and regularly breaks down interspecies musical barriers under the slogan of "search for truth", as well as the daily column "Musical occasion from Mikhail Mitropolsky." For several years he was the author and host of the weekly program “Jazz and More” on the AST TV channel and Rambler TV Network. Published as a jazz columnist in the magazines “Jazz.Ru”, “Jazz-kvadrat”, “Yat”, “XXL”, newspapers “Nezavisimaya”, “Evening Club”, www.jazz.ru, etc. Since 1990, about three For years he headed the publishing company DIALOG-MUSIC. Author of the idea and artistic director of the Moscow International House of Music project “European Jazz - 21st Century”.

In 1998 he participated in the creation of the original music project“Second Approximation” (leader Andrei Razin), combining an improvisational approach with deep compositional thinking. Mitropolsky continues to collaborate with this project, one of the few Russian groups that represent on the domestic and European stage not the routine, but the original path of development of jazz and improvisational music. Since 2007, he has been conducting the concert series “Improvisation of the New Century” at the Jewish Cultural Center in Moscow.

Member of the jury of the First International Festival-Competition jazz improvisation “Master-Jam Fest” 2013

For over 30 years he has been researching jazz music and borderline musical phenomena. A physicist by training, a researcher at the Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Mikhail Mikhailovich Mitropolsky was born in Moscow on January 6, 1950. As a child, I dreamed of being a janitor, driver and pilot. In my youth, instead of music education, I listened to a lot using the Yubileiny electrophone. In order to realize his childhood dream, in 1967 he graduated from the 2nd mathematical school at Moscow State University and entered the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute to major in quantum radiophysics. But it was this year that the first MEPhI Jazz School in Moscow began its activities under the leadership of MEPhI associate professor Yuri Pavlovich Kozyrev. Such a coincidence could not be accidental, and fate began to persistently shift the arrows of Mitropolsky’s interests from cosmological problems to the jazz sphere. At the first stage, he tried himself in a vocal ensemble. In contrast to his own work, he fell in love with jazz, which did not stop him from devoting more than two decades to space physics. As a research fellow at the Lebedev Physical Institute, in 1978 he began lecturing first on the history and then on the stylistics of jazz at the Experimental Studio of Pop and Jazz Music, which the MEPhI School of Jazz became. Currently, Mitropolsky's course takes two years, and students at the Moscow College of Improvisational Music are forced to take exams and write serious term papers on it.
In 1979, he began hosting concerts at the jazz studio, and for ten years, while the jazz studio was located in the Moskvorechye cultural center, he was the host of all concerts and festivals. Gradually expanding the geography of concert halls, he began to represent musicians in numerous Moscow concerts and in other cities of Russia. Over the past decade and a half, he has been invited to conduct concerts and festivals in various cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Lithuania.
Since 1989, overwhelmed by educational ideas, Mitropolsky began broadcasting on various Moscow radio stations. The first broadcasts were on 1-program All-Union Radio in the “Interlocutor” section and were called “The Golden Years of Jazz.” From this moment to the present day, the author's interests diffuse from the jazz tradition to the less popular and more sophisticated directions of modern improvisation and composer's music. But this path took more than one decade, and during this time Mitropolsky’s programs were broadcast on radio “Youth”, “Vozrozhdenie”, “Radio 101”, “Open Radio”.
The most long-term projects were author's program“Jazz Panorama” on radio “Mayak” (10 years) and weekly two-hour programs “Solo for Jazz” aired for 8 years on radio “Nadezhda”, which then moved to radio “Moscow Speaks”. These projects gave rise to a club of radio listeners, the meetings of whose participants took place “offline”.
Since January 2000, the program “Under the Sign of Jazz” began its existence on Radio Russia, which by the end of the same year smoothly transformed into the weekly program “Endless Approximation”, breaking the rigid connection with jazz and regularly breaking down interspecific musical barriers under the slogan of “search truth." And to this day, on Saturdays at 23.10 on Radio Russia, Mitropolsky allows himself to mock established views on the musical device.
For several years, Mitropolsky was the author and host of the weekly program “Jazz and More” on the AST TV channel, then on the Rambler TV network channel. 126 episodes of this program contain extensive concert material from Moscow jazz life, filmed in the first years of the 21st century.
Since 2000, Mitropolsky has been the art director of the publishing company “Dialogue-Music” for about three years, which managed to release 45 original CD releases not only of jazz, but also of world music and new age.
In the early 90s, Mikhail Mitropolsky stopped active scientific work and completely went into jazz journalism, which was especially facilitated by the emergence of the Internet portal www.site and the magazine "Full Jazz", of which he became a columnist. In addition to Internet resources, he publishes in the magazines “Jazz-Kvadrat”, “Yat”, “XXL”, newspapers “Nezavisimaya”, “Evening Club”, etc. At one time he was one of the initiators of the creation of the Moscow branch of the Association of Jazz Journalists, of which he is a member and is, as well as a member of the Russian and International Union of Journalists.
In 1998, he participated in the creation of the original musical project “Second Approximation” (leader Andrei Razin), combining an improvisational approach with deep composing thinking. Mitropolsky continues to collaborate with this project, one of the few Russian groups that represent on the domestic and European stage not the routine, but the original path of development of jazz and improvisational music. Based on the activities of the “Second Approximation”, in the spring of 2004, the project of the Moscow International House of Music “European Jazz - XXI Century” arose, artistic director which became Mikhail Mitropolsky.

On February 19, 2017, a course called “Musical Non-School” starts at the Jewish Cultural Center on Nikitskaya in Moscow.

For five lessons once a month, those interested are promised to be told what music is, how to begin to understand, “and then, perhaps, to love” music, “what happened to music in the 20th century” and “why it has to do with us.”

Classes are declared as family-friendly, and will be held in unusual shape: at first, children and parents will study separately - a “musical construction set for the little ones” and a lecture for the big ones - and then all the listeners will come together to play music together.

The idea for this course came from jazz columnist, presenter music programs, researcher at the Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Mitropolsky, who will give lectures to adults.

Singer Tatyana Komova and composer and pianist Andrei Razin, together making up two thirds, will work with the children. unique ensemble"Second Approximation"

Mikhail Mitropolsky told Grigory Durnovo about the idea and essence of his project.

- What is the purpose of your course? What would you like to get out of it?

The idea for this course came to me quite a long time ago. She was born due to two circumstances.

Firstly, in recent years I have been bewildered by the reaction of the public at concerts. The reaction sometimes seems to me inadequate, not corresponding to the music, its content, its design - everything that is inherent in it.

I wondered about this, in fact, for quite some time when my wife ( Tatyana Komova - G.D.) was studying complex music(despite its ease in terms of genre) in the trio and duet “Romen”. I watched their rehearsals, watched how everything that then happened on stage was perfected in an incredible number of nuances. And then I became convinced that the public did not hear it.

I encountered the same effect in jazz halls when I observed a huge difference between musicians who are engaged in a kind of “Lego construction” on stage from ready-made elements, without giving themselves the trouble to create an artistic image and a full-fledged artifact, and musicians who are truly artists , - by the way, there are very few of them.

The public very often either reacted to musicians of these two categories in the same way, or gave preference to the former. Often jazz venues prefer something familiar. As you know, the applause that is heard when a jazz standard begins to sound is addressed not so much to the musicians as to the listeners themselves - “We know it, well done!”

I observed the same thing in academic halls. The public perceives the external side. Music that requires work and penetration often remains unclaimed.

Here's a typical example. I have friends who are not experts in music, but they listen to it, moreover, they know that listening to music is decent. They go to the conservatory. I ask what they are up to. Let's say Vivaldi, "The Four Seasons".

"Who's playing?" - I ask. - “It doesn’t matter, what’s the difference? The music is good."

This approach is completely opposite to the one that I have developed over many decades, thanks to jazz. As you know, jazz is highly individualized music, very dependent on huge amount artistic and expressive means used by a particular musician. And if the set of these means is rich, if the musician is an artist, a significant result is obtained, something that causes “goosebumps”, something that causes shock.

But for the listeners I’m talking about, this doesn’t matter. They know what Vivaldi wrote good music, and whoever plays her will be good. This is absolutely not true! I declare this absolutely responsibly, I have been convinced of this many times in the very famous music included in the clip, which I conditionally call “On a Working Noon”.

The younger generation does not know, but in Soviet time there was a program that sounded during the lunch break and, by the way, gave the workers a very good set classical music. Limited set, but everyone knew him, which is not bad at all. Now there is no such clip, or almost none.

I really wanted to make sure that people’s eyes began to open to the essence of music, to its interiority, to what can lead to satisfaction, to pleasure - much greater than what they receive.

I'm not a musician myself, I don't have a systematic music education, however, with experience and maybe a different approach, I began to see it. And I would really like to give this vision to at least my friends. What’s interesting is that I more often meet real music experts who are deeply involved in it on various forums on the Internet than in a concert hall, even in Great hall conservatory. The public there sometimes upsets me.

And on the Internet I sometimes see judgments of people who don’t go to concerts often because they don’t trust what can happen there. They are looking for what they want, what is truly interesting.

The second circumstance is that, as a physicist, I am initially determined to understand “how it works” - remember the program on the Discovery Channel?

I have always been very interested in how music “works”, how it affects people, why this happens. Naturally, I started with jazz, because I have been doing jazz for many decades. This attempt to understand led me to the fact that I saw in music, and in any music, mechanisms that seemed to me similar to mechanisms in other types of cognition, not only in art. In particular, in science, which I am close to.

It turned out that music is an extremely mathematical art, perhaps more mathematical than any other. Mathematical patterns work in it, they really work, and it is easy to see how this happens, due to the fact that the brain processes this information and produces results that correspond to these mathematical constructions. This result is visible and easy to trace. It is visible starting from the simplest mechanisms, elementary processes, the same ones that physics deals with.

These two factors led me to want to look at everything with different eyes. Maybe this perspective will give people the opportunity to perceive music differently.

- Could you give an example of such a simple mechanism?

Certainly. For example, the effect of consonance and dissonance on a person has a very simple mathematical explanation. After all, Pythagoras already knew that the corresponding intervals are built on the ratios of frequencies with small numbers. The larger the numbers whose ratio defines the interval, the more dissonant it is.

The scale, the laws of musical harmony, and the scale itself are built on this. It’s interesting that children’s books about music describe the construction of scales in a fairly adequate way. Not all, of course.

But the more adult the book is, the more confusing the material is presented. Musicological theorists very often unnecessarily complicate their constructions.

Just look at George Russell's modal concept, which is very actively used in jazz. It itself is not very simple, and when other people start working with it, the situation becomes even worse. While the mathematical explanations for all this are not complicated.

The fact is that people with a humanitarian bent - and this includes the vast majority of musicians - have been forced from childhood with the idea that mathematics and physics are very complex matters inaccessible to the average person. It is not true. It has its difficulties, but there are difficulties everywhere. General concepts related to mathematics and physics are quite accessible to humans.

There is a disproportion between the behavior of humanists and physicists. A decent, normal physicist must sometimes go to exhibitions, concerts, theaters, and read books.

At the same time, try to talk with a humanist about elementary, simple things physics-related ones that describe the world in which we live. The attempt will not only be rejected, but with indignation. At the same time, I assure you that knowledge about the physical world is much simpler, more accessible than what you encounter when you come to a concert hall, an art gallery, or read a book. And very beautiful! There's nothing wrong with them. Humanists were simply scared in childhood. Or they were unlucky with the teacher.

Almost everyone has the ability for mathematics - in approximately the same proportion as an ear for music, which only those who have impaired physiology lack. It is simply often not developed. The situation is the same with mathematical abilities. And an elementary mathematical approach provides an elementary orientation, which can, it seems to me, further serve as a guide in understanding what music is and how it should be listened to.

That is, if these principles are explained to a person, will he begin to perceive music differently? Will his approach become closer to yours?

I think yes. This will allow him to reach greater depths. One step is to explain how the musical form comes together.

Most people perceive all kinds of music as a collection of chants. In a simple song there is one chant, in a symphony there is a set of chants that follow each other. But in fact, a large form is a deep, rather ramified interaction between these, relatively speaking, chants and their environment, in a particular case - harmony. And not just an interaction, but a temporary one.

When a person listens to a piece of large form, he must keep in mind what happened before. Much like reading a detective story, when the reader must remember what happened to actors how their destinies overlapped, how they interacted with each other in order to later understand the outcome. And the majority of people who come to the concert hall for the same “Seasons” by Vivaldi perceive them precisely as melodies at this time, this moment time, nothing more.

But this is a completely different level of satisfaction from art. Yes, you need to learn this. We propose a method - hopefully relatively fast.

Does this mean that composers and best performers Also in some ways, relatively speaking, physicists, what do they hear a little differently than others?

Of course, but they and the public are on opposite sides of the process. If we talk about composers, then, of course, among them there were many who were guided by formal signs, on which the element of creativity was further layered, and their talent manifested itself on top of this.

The strict form of fugue composition was once such a guide. The strict form of Gregorian chants in different forms was such a guide. The strict form of writing in serial music is also a system that requires a certain subordination. Further, intuitive talent can create more or less significant works on this basis.

But there were also amazing composers, whom I never cease to admire, who deliberately used complex mathematical structures, and, interestingly, they produced, in the ordinary sense of the word, very beautiful music.

One such great example is Yanis Xenakis. He was a professional mathematician. He worked with Le Corbusier as an apprentice and created mathematical rationales for his architectural designs.

But being a mathematician or physicist is not a necessary quality. Definitely different. The intuitive constructions that arise in the composer (despite the fact that he may not be aware of what mathematical basis they have), as it turns out, are in one way or another certainly connected with the evolution of society, society. Because - and this is another factor that led to the emergence of this course - I noticed that evolutionary or revolutionary changes in music and in other arts occurred in parallel with similar changes in physics, mathematics, science and technology.

Bach lived at the same time as Leibniz and Newton. By the way, it was Leibniz who wrote the words:

“Music is the secret arithmetic exercise of the soul, which calculates without knowing it.”

Since then, the terminology has changed - we are not talking about arithmetic in our current understanding, but about mathematics. But this remark corresponds exactly to what I am talking about.

Such changes occur regularly. One of the most important revolutionary changes occurred in turn of the 19th century and XX centuries. In everything - in science, in painting, in theater, in literature and in music, of course, too. This change led to the fact that figurative art moved into the category of non-figurative art, at least not based on images that are common to us.

The same thing happened in science: quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, which were developing very actively at that time, are unimaginable. For one simple reason: in his development, man has come to understand what goes beyond the limits of his experience - in his space, in his scale, in his times.

We are limited in our perception of the world; our receptors operate within a certain range. When we go beyond these limits, it turns out that everything looks a little different there. Quantum mechanics is the field of the microworld. A person cannot imagine the patterns that are realized in it. Just imagine it as an image. The newest gadgets are full of quantum mechanics; these are field-effect transistors, built on principles that cannot be represented in conventional images. There is a particle, there is an infinitely high wall, and the particle cannot jump over the wall, but has the probability of ending up behind it, despite the fact that the wall, in the usual sense, is impenetrable.

In ordinary life this cannot happen, but it works, and we use it, for example, when we make calls on a mobile phone. And so on every step.

Exactly the same things began to happen in music. There are no more familiar images like those we see in the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. (Although, if you think about it, it’s also unclear where they come from, but we are used to them, this is our cultural genetics.) Music becomes less figurative.

This transition, it seems to me, begins very actively with Mussorgsky. He has a lot of music that seems to have been written in the twenties of the twentieth century. For example, the “Children’s” series. Listen to him carefully! This is absolutely not nineteenth-century music, it is incredibly avant-garde for its time. Oddly enough, this music has something in common with the music of jazz pianist Thelonious Monk.

And then the process went on. We began to receive music that did not correspond to the genetic cultural image that we had developed: the New Vienna school, our avant-garde artists of the twenties. This was the first wave of the avant-garde, then the second after World War II - Cage, Stockhausen and so on.

These things are hard to perceive an ordinary person, the person is not familiar with this language. And, naturally, the question arises about the speculative nature of all this - isn’t this an artist’s mockery of an ordinary person?

A symbol of this attitude is the exclamation “My child will draw the same way.” So - no, it is not. This is not speculation, but a real need for the development of a person who comes to a new language in a variety of ways.

In this course we limit ourselves to the first wave of the avant-garde. Simply because there are only five classes until the summer. But to be continued. If people come to us, naturally there will be a continuation, I have already planned it.

As part of my program on Radio Russia, which was closed in August 2016, I had a series “ Quantum theory Clavier”, where I pursued the idea of ​​a similar path of development of science and art. I had three lines: I mentioned a little about physics, I talked about academic music and jazz.

But jazz had a delay due to the fact that it only emerged when the revolution in academic music was already in full swing. Jazz traveled this path much more quickly, and its similar time spanned the 1950s and 1960s. This idea is included in my current course.

I can't say that I have a completely formed concept that I can write a book about this. I'm in the process of researching. These are the results I would like to bring up for discussion. I think this will get people interested in music in general.

- To what extent does what you are talking about resonate with existing musicological theories?

Naturally, I use a variety of literature, turning to the works of Boris Asafiev, Yuri Kholopov and a number of other authors. But certain difficulties arise.

For example, Yuri Nikolaevich Kholopov is the smartest person, the author of many interesting ideas and models. But in his works I often encounter uncertainty in terminology, an attempt to circumvent the necessary definitions. Natural scientists are accustomed to a standard type of thinking: there are axiomatics, there are assumptions, there are proofs.

In traditional musicology, unfortunately, everything is not quite like that. This uncertainty confuses the researchers themselves, despite their enlightenment and intelligence.

Another thing is that most musicians do just fine without these theories. They cannot say what a musical interval is, although they know what it is with their hands or vocal cords. And for me, “saying” is very important. Because a thought, in my opinion, is a formulated thought, and not just an intuitive one. But we have different professions: The musician creates, and I think.

Why do you think some the most important phenomena the era from which you are starting are still not felt by the general public, although more than a hundred years have passed since that revolution in art?

Will you allow me to joke about this? In Soviet times there was this joke: “Tell me, why is there no meat in stores? “Well, you know, the Soviet Union is moving by leaps and bounds towards communism, and the cattle can’t keep up with it.” This anecdote, of course, is offensive to the public, but people really don’t bother to comprehend new language to understand the new entity.

Firstly, because this is work that requires a lot of time. Look for yourself: our spiritual liberation at the moment of perestroika, when everything became possible for us, when we were free to do whatever we wanted, it would seem that all creative valves should have immediately opened.

Nothing of the kind - if it happened, it was not to the extent it should have been. For one simple reason: people had no time to do this, they had to earn their own food, they had nothing to eat, they came home exhausted, and they had no time to decipher and study complex languages.

Secondly, a class of rich people, nouveau riche, has formed who know, for example, that jazz is good. At the same time, they perceive this music as something isolated, special, but intended for the arrangement of their life, home, and leisure time.

In physics there is a rough division into basic science, which clarifies the deep root causes of our existence, and the applied one, which translates physical laws on a practical level. One is no worse than the other. In music, including jazz, the same thing happens, relatively speaking.

There is, for example, jazz, which is fundamental, and there is one that serves, I would say, as design. This is not bad at all, it’s just a different area of ​​activity. She does not open anything new, no depths, she arranges environment. Jazz has become just that for people who have money to pay for it. That’s why there’s such a strange reaction in the halls. “Radio Jazz” directly declares exactly this behavior, and there is nothing to complain about, it is designed for this.

New languages ​​are difficult. And besides the fact that there is no understanding of the new language, an alternative is constantly offered to it - on TV, on the radio. The music that is played there most often is difficult to classify as art. I say this not because I'm a snob, not because I despise this kind of music.

But there is a criterion that I formulated for myself: a work of art must necessarily contain a conflict within itself, sometimes even at the level of intonation. Simple form, which is used in an ordinary song - and not just any song, there are many songs that have their own drama, but I’m talking about many modern songs - is devoid of this conflict.

During the course we will also discuss translation from the language of music into other languages. All the figurative analogies that are talked about in connection with music - the babbling of a brook, the singing of birds, fate knocking on the door - in my opinion, are extremely harmful. I realized a long time ago that music has its own imagery, which cannot be reduced to visual images; it is a different system.

Of course, the perception of music still turns into a set of experiences that are in one way or another connected with human experience - hatred, grief, forgiveness, and so on. But the imagery of music does not come down to this, and you can experience it directly.

I recently saw on TV the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia, led by Vladimir Spivakov, playing Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. The finale is underway - as far as I understand, this is the first time in the history of composer's music when the sound goes nowhere.

And so - there seems to be nothing special to play, there is nothing virtuosic. And at the same time, when the camera stops on Spivakov, we see sweat appearing on his face. And when the orchestra finishes playing, the camera shows the violinist crying. Surely they have played the Sixth Symphony a hundred times, they know everything perfectly well. But in this act itself there was a terrible tension.

- The course includes separate activities for children. What are their specifics?

I only suggested the “adult” part - what we have been talking about all this time. The Jewish Cultural Center came up with the idea of ​​connecting children, in particular, former manager cultural programs of the center Yulia Shlimak. They generally do a lot of work with children there. It was their idea to create parallel classes for children and adults. And to be honest, I didn’t decide to do this right away, because it’s not easy, I’ve never worked with children. We decided to organize these parallel classes so that adults and children, despite the fact that we will do different things with them, have common topics for conversations between classes, so that they have something to discuss, experience and listen to.

Tatyana Komova and Andrei Razin took over the work with the children. You need to play with children. By the way, please note that in both Russian and other languages ​​the word “play,” which is used for the act of playing music, also refers to a child’s game of something. This is worth thinking about, first of all, for musicians who rarely perceive the act of playing music as a real game - with certain rules, with a certain amount of freedom, with a creative attitude to what they will do within the framework of these rules.

Children need to be told how music works, of course, at an elementary level, not at the same level as adults. And I think this should turn them on. The emphasis is on classical, but there will be other types of music.

In the first lesson, children will be shown “ Ave Maria", a composition by Gounod based on a Bach prelude, but performed by Bobby McFerrin along with a crowd of listeners in a square in Leipzig. That is, the mechanism of creating music will be shown, how one music transforms into another. It seems to me that children are more receptive and less stereotyped than adults.

By the way, at the Moscow College of Improvisational Music, where I lecture, I have to work with people who have different training, - so, the hardest thing is with those who graduated from the Conservatory.

Each lesson has a point called “Musical outline”, which combines several names or directions. On what basis is such a outline obtained?

For children, each lesson has several content parts. One part concerns theory. In the first lesson, say, the theoretical part introduces the child to an understanding of what pitch, volume, and duration of sound are. Then the conversation goes about notes, about meter, about mode. The music included in the lesson should illustrate the concepts being introduced. This is the first task.

Secondly, music should initiate the child’s imagination, because a significant part of the lesson is the joint playing of music by children and teachers - Andrei Razin at the keys and Tatyana Komova, who has a voice. Moreover, we suggest that at the end of the lesson we bring the children and adults together and have a little jam.

The selection of works for the "World of Musical Instruments" lesson should also demonstrate the structure and use of various musical instruments, so Britten's "Guide to the Orchestra" should definitely appear here.

- Why does AC/DC appear?

My grandson is passionate about the music of this group. But at the same time he does not know the history of rock music, and for him the discovery is that, for example, Led Zeppelin did a lot of what was done in the next generations of rock musicians. But we need to focus on things familiar to children.

As for the adult part, in the first lesson I take on the impossible task of imagining the evolution of all music. I have already selected the material, of course, along with the video sequence. At the same time, I had to select performances in which the musicians are co-authors of the composers. That's why I use the recordings of Glenn Gould, György Czifra, Vladimir Sofronitsky.

Andrei Volkonsky will definitely be represented, who knew how to play ancient music, oddly enough, for the reason that he was an avant-garde artist.

We recently discussed the lesson program with Vyacheslav Ganelin and talked about the fact that for modern man same Gregorian chant is avant-garde - the principles of its creation are so different from those of music more familiar to the average listener. That is why many turned to ancient music when the second wave of the avant-garde began.

If jams are expected, does this mean that the emphasis is on those who have at least some musical education, at least within the confines of a music school?

No. In order to participate in such a “home” jam, it is not at all necessary to have a systematic musical education. Asafiev has a wonderful term for this - an enlightened amateur. We must try to liberate any person so that he can play, sing, try to play music. After all, almost any person can speak, is capable of conversation. Music needs to have the same conversation.

Interviewed by Grigory Durnovo

1999, the year of the opening of the Dom Cultural Center, turned out to be very fruitful - perhaps the premonition of the pacifying stability of the following Putin years gave rise to crazy projects. One of them was the festival of new music "Jazz-Off", which was held at three Moscow venues, the main one being the stage of the Moscow Theater young viewer. The list of participants in the incredible marathon of alternative music included Vladimir Tarasov, Anatoly Vapirov, the Huun-huur-tu quartet (Tuva), Petras Vishnyauskas, Klaus Kugel, Jason Kahn, Vladimir Volkov and "Volkovtrio", Sergei Starostin, Ad Hoc Groop, project "E-69" and artists of the "Emergency Exit" group, Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky, Evelina Petrova, Liza Korobkina, "Zga" (St. Petersburg), "NHA" (Chelyabinsk), Academy early music Tatiana Grindenko, Creative association"Beyond Dialogue" (artist Boris Berger), "Green Wave" (Katya Chili and the Ozon group, Pelageya, Ivan Smirnov Quartet), Anatoly Gerasimov...

After the death of Nikolai Dmitriev, the HOUSE regularly holds a festival in memory of him " Long arms"(after the name of the publishing company). The first years of the festival were extremely intense and representative. For example, participants in the 3rd festival in 2006 were Peter Bretzmann, Bill Drummond, Ryoji Hojito, Jim Thirlwell and many others. By 2010, the festival came to a reduced format of 4 ensembles at several venues over 4 months.

In the last two or three years, the "HOUSE" poster illustrates a noticeable shift towards programs that allow you to comfortably spend time under the slogans of nonconformism - the percentage of various video art performances, pop ethnics, and electronics has increased in them. Real creative programs of new improvisational, difficult-to-perceive music have been somewhat relegated to the background, and most importantly, their implementation is increasingly at risk due to difficulties in gathering an audience.

MITROPOLSKY Mikhail

MITROPOLSKY Mikhail Mikhailovich

06.01.1950, Moscow

He did not receive any special musical education. In 1973 he graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute with a degree in physics solid and quantum radiophysics." He was a researcher at the Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and published more than 10 scientific articles. In 1968, he entered the MEPhI School of Jazz, studied with Yuri Kozyrev, and sang in a vocal quintet for two years. In 1975 he began giving lectures on the history of jazz at the Experimental Studio of Pop and Jazz Art (the second name is the MEPhI School of Jazz). Since 1979 he has led concerts in the Studio, and later became a presenter at festivals not only in Russian cities, but also in Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova, Belarus, Israel and Norway. S works on radio (“Youth”, “Radio-101”, “Open Radio”, “Mayak”, “Nadezhda”, “Radio Russia”, “Moscow Speaks”). His original jazz programs are “Endless Approach”, “Musical Occasion from Mikhail Mitropolsky”, the television series “Jazz and More”. Developed concert tickets “European Jazz - XXI Century” (International House of Music, 2004), “Improvisations of the New Century” (Jewish Cultural Center, 2007). He was the art director of the publishing complex “Dialogue-Music” (2000-02). Accepted Active participation in the creation of the trio “Second Approximation”. Author of numerous articles, reviews, annotations, booklets dedicated to modern jazz. It was published on the Internet portal "Jazz.Ru" big job"The History of Jazz for Beginners."

Information from the book

From book

It was no coincidence that the vocal and instrumental orchestra led by Yuri Sergeevich Saulsky (1928-2005) debuted at the second Leningrad Jazz Festival. With this performance (April 1966), as well as the first concerts at the Moscow Variety Theater, the orchestra immediately announced its intention to seriously promote jazz. And, indeed, after Oleg Lundstrem’s orchestra, no other metropolitan orchestra has offered the public so many instrumental pieces in one concert. “Jazz is still a stepchild on the stage,” wrote Saulsky, “But real jazz music requires philharmonic propaganda, which is certainly devoid, first of all, of all the components of the usual stage. You need to learn to listen to music without justifying it. Real jazz should exist along with pop, popular light music - this is unnecessary to prove. But jazz music should be promoted as seriously as chamber music, and as widely as pop music.” The group was unusual: in addition to traditional orchestral sections (trumpets, trombones, saxophones, rhythm group), it used a vocal octet as an instrumental group. Using vocal-syllabic singing (scat), the vocalists performed riffs, short melodic-rhythmic formulas during improvisations of instrumentalists, or created a harmonic background.