Laimis Martinkėnas was the first person I called when I arrived in Vilnius. Both of us were listed in the directory of jazz club chairpersons in the Soviet Union — I in Arkhangelsk, and he in Vilnius. That same day, Laimis invited me to his home and introduced me to Valdas Neniškis. Valdas owned two remarkable collections — jazz records and paintings by Lithuanian artists, undoubtedly the finest collection in Lithuania.
Soon afterward, Dr. Jonas Žiburkus joined our circle; he, too, possessed an outstanding collection of Lithuanian art. But most importantly, Laimis, Valdas, and Jonas were true connoisseurs and passionate lovers of jazz. We have remained close friends ever since.
And, of course, there were the Vilnius artists, in whose studios I spent all my free time outside of concerts and rehearsals: Algis Kuras, Valentinas Antanavičius, Eugenijus Cukermanas, Linas Katinas, Igor Pekuras and Teresė Rožanskaitė, Algis Švėgžda, photographer Vitas Luckus, art historian Alfonsas Andriuškevičius, Dalia Kasčiūnaitė, Jūratė Bogdanavičiūtė, Linas Jankus, Kazė Zimblytė, Algis Šeškus, Valdas Gurskis, Liudas Vanaigaitis, Ričardas Vaitiekūnas, Rimtautas Gibavičius, and Vitas Kalinauskas. I often saw many of them in the audience when I performed solo or with other ensembles.
Lithuania was rich in talent, especially in those years. My interest in and love for the visual arts naturally led me to the Vilnius artistic community. We communicated closely, often gathering in the studios of Kuras or Antanavičius. We played cards (the German game Skat) and brought food and drinks with us. These meetings were mainly occasions for discussion and exchange of information and ideas about what was happening in the world of art. Naturally, they also included conversations about politics and jokes about Brezhnev and his era.
Alik Fonibo, a physicist and devoted jazz enthusiast, knowing of my interest in the visual arts, introduced me to the studio of the artist Ivan Chuikov. He lived and worked in a newly built artists’ residence with studios on Lyapidevsky Street in Moscow, near the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station. I recognized Chuikov immediately. He attended all our concerts, and because he was very tall, I could always spot him — a head above the rest of the audience — listening attentively and with great curiosity to what was happening on stage.
At Ivan’s studio, I met Ilya Kabakov, Eduard Gorokhovsky, and Viktor Pivovarov, who lived in the same building. Thanks to them, I was able to immerse myself in the world of painting, poetry, and literature that existed unofficially in Moscow at the time, standing in contrast to the official doctrine of Socialist Realism. I am happy that we became, and remain, close friends.
Whenever our Trio performed in Moscow or Leningrad, they attended all our concerts, regardless of how many there were or the venues in which they were held. They formed, in a sense, the core of our audience — devoted listeners, connoisseurs, and critics at the same time. Many of them, despite living in the same city, had not seen each other for months, and our concerts became an opportunity not only to hear our new programs but also to reconnect and spend time together.
Backstage after concerts, you could meet, in addition to those I have already mentioned, artists Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev, Vladimir Yankilevsky, Eduard Shteinberg, Francisco Infante, Grisha Bruskin, and Yuri Vashchenko; poets Genrikh Sapgir, Dmitry Prigov, and Lev Rubinstein; architect Sasha Velikanov; and the remarkable photographer and journalist Yuri Rost. At the time, there was a joke that if the police vans were brought in and the audience at one of the Trio’s concerts were arrested, unofficial art in the USSR would be finished in a single evening.
Once, before a concert at the Central House of Artists on Krymskaya Embankment, while greeting friends, I overheard one of the staff members say to her colleague, “That Trio has come again — well, all the nonconformists will gather at the concert tonight.” She clearly liked the sound of the word “nonconformists”; it was quite possible she did not even know what it meant.
In Leningrad, our regular listeners included artists Yuri Dyshlenko, Gleb Bogomolov, Anatoly Belkin, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Zakhar Kolovsky, and Lyonya Borisov; poets Oleg Grigoriev and Arkady Dragomoshchenko; and a man beloved and admired by the entire creative community of Leningrad — Vladlen Gavrilchik. We always laughed to tears at his poems, full of irony and humor.
Each of these remarkable individuals deserves a book of their own. I write only about what relates to our Trio. Yet their influence on the Trio’s music, through my friendship and interaction with them, was immense.
They all seemed to belong to the same creative circle, and yet each was entirely unique and followed their own path. Time scattered many of them across different countries and in different directions. Some withstood the test of time and fame; others did not. It is painful to see two close friends of mine, meeting backstage after a concert, no longer acknowledging each other. Each is talented, but perhaps it is inevitable in art that there comes a time when one museum or gallery is no longer enough for two, and the stage becomes too small.
There were other artistic circles that existed in a semi-legal state. One such group was the Lianozovo circle, which included Oskar Rabin, Dmitry Plavinsky, Vladimir Nemukhin, the Kropivnitsky family, and others. These artists, unafraid to take the path of open dissent and confrontation with Socialist Realism, “took to the barricades” in September 1974. I am referring to the famous Bulldozer Exhibition on the outskirts of Moscow, when, on orders from the KGB, bulldozers were literally driven over the paintings of these courageous artists.
In 1970, during our first performance with Ganelin at a festival in the city of Gorky, I became friends with the Moscow artist Yura Sobolev. He was one of the leading figures of the unofficial creative elite of those years. As the chief artist of the magazine Knowledge Is Power— at that time one of the most progressive and engaging publications, Yura used its pages to publish, or rather to slip past censorship under the guise of illustrations for popular science articles, reproductions of works by Yankilevsky, Kabakov, Ülo Sooster, Shteinberg, Pivovarov, and many other artists who were not officially recognized in the country. The magazine was extremely popular and widely distributed across the vast Soviet Union, providing invaluable exposure for these artists.
An intellectual and philosopher, Yura’s Moscow apartment was a gathering place for the most interesting and, as they would say today, “advanced” representatives of unofficial art. Fluent in several languages, he translated articles from Western journals and shared them with fellow artists, showing that beyond the borders of the Soviet Union there existed an entirely different art, independent of politics.
Although he was a founder of several movements within the Moscow art scene and many artists gathered around him, Yura himself always remained a solitary figure in art. His drawings and graphic works revealed an astonishing ability to unite the human body with nature and the cosmos; every detail formed part of a larger, unified universe. Each of his works was like a galaxy composed of independent planets. While continuing the traditions of the great masters of graphic art, he remained completely original. Everything I had seen before seemed merely an echo of Impressionism or the early 20th-century avant-garde. Many artists, like jazz musicians, want to resemble anyone but themselves.
Yura immediately opened his home to me, as he did every place he later lived. Naturally, he was always a welcome guest when he came to Vilnius. He was a great lover and connoisseur of jazz. We spent hours over coffee, smoking pipes, sampling different tobacco blends, and listening to music. And in all those years, I never once heard him speak a bad word about anyone. Yura knew how to recognize and appreciate the individuality of every person, regardless of who they were or what they did.
Sobolev was an artist in constant search, much like Miles Davis in jazz. Whenever he felt that a source of inspiration was running dry, he would, without hesitation, move into a different style or even a different genre, while always remaining true to himself. He created remarkable animated films with Andrei Khrzhanovsky, directed slide films about jazz, and wrote an outstanding screenplay for a film by Slava Chekin. Later, he became fascinated with puppet theatre and moved to Chelyabinsk to work at Misha Khusid’s theatre. From Chelyabinsk, he relocated to Tsarskoye Selo near Leningrad, where he established professional performing arts courses and founded a theatre. Each year, Sobolev organized arts festivals there, managing to find sponsors who could support the invitation of artists and musicians from abroad.
It takes time, and perhaps distance, to fully appreciate Yura Sobolev’s contribution to and influence on the development of Russian art in the second half of the twentieth century.
Ilya quite literally drew me into the world of visual art — the art of installation. In fact, it had begun even earlier: whenever I came to Moscow for concerts, I would always stay in his studio on Sretensky Boulevard, in the attic under the roof of the Rossiya building.
It was there that we created the performance “Olga Georgievna, something’s boiling…”, where Ilya would read dialogues he had written, fragments of conversations between neighbors in a Soviet communal apartment, while I assembled the surrounding soundscape: the clatter of falling pots and plates, the ever-blaring Soviet songs on the radio… Given my own experience of living in a communal apartment in Arkhangelsk, it was not difficult to work with this material. All those sounds still live somewhere deep in my memory.
We presented our rather conceptual performance several times — in Berlin and Chicago, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and at the museum in Prato near Florence (in my view, the most compelling version took shape there).
This experience expanded my musical language and helped me avoid being confined by my own patterns, allowing me to move fluidly between music and installation. I don’t even call these projects exhibitions — I call them Sound Games. I play… Perhaps the sonoristic sounds that are difficult to perform or even define in a concert setting are precisely what I find within installations.
It is hard for me to say when and how this fascination began, whether under the inevitable influence of my artist friends, in whose studios I spent all my free time, or from the moment we began staging performances for a small circle of friends in Kabakov’s studio.
But I am absolutely certain of one thing: I was already prepared for this when, in 1991, Jürgen Harten, director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, invited me to create a performance for the opening of an exhibition of Soviet contemporary art.
It was there that I met Ilya Kabakov again. By that time, he had already left the country for good and was living between Paris and New York. Ilya showed me his new work titled The Red Wagon, in which he used songs by émigrés from Brighton Beach. These songs felt rather restaurant-like and did not quite fit Kabakov’s concept.
At that point, I already had a program titled Atto III Drama Theatre, which had been recorded and released on vinyl. It seemed to me that it aligned perfectly with Ilya’s idea, and that is exactly what happened. This became our first collaborative work. You can now see it at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
After our debut in Düsseldorf, Ilya Kabakov sent me a letter proposing that we create a joint work for Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York. During the opening of the exhibition of a fictional character invented by Kabakov, the artist Koshelev from Barnaul, water was supposed to drip from the ceiling, creating a certain rhythmic and melodic palette. I immediately grasped the idea and gladly immersed myself in this “water,” enjoying the opportunity to play with sound not only on stage, but also within the space of a museum and gallery.
“Incident in the Museum, or Music of Water” — that was the title of our installation. The idea turned out to be so fascinating and engaging for me that I still work with it with great pleasure. Back then, at the Feldman Gallery, I made a recording of “Music of Water,” and it fit perfectly as the seventh act, following “Atto VI,” in the sequence of my solo percussion programs. Perhaps it should have been removed from the lineup of musical programs and classified instead as an installation, as part of my “Sound Games”, but at that time I did not yet know whether I would continue working with installations. For me, water became an excellent percussion instrument.
Among the audience at our performances with Kabakov there were often people from the former USSR. Their reaction to this familiar situation was very emotional, especially in New York after our performance at the Majestic Theatre. It felt as though they were nostalgically recalling their lives in the Soviet Union. And without that rough language and even a fly in a plate of borscht, life in New York seemed uninteresting to them…
By the way, we did eventually make it to the famous Brighton Beach in New York. We had lunch at a restaurant called Black Sea. The borscht and all the food were quite decent. But the overall impression really was as if you were somewhere in Odessa. Everyone spoke only Russian, with a strong and charming Odessa accent. At the same time, the style of communication felt distinctly Soviet. Especially when you walk into a grocery store, it becomes clear that these salespeople must have worked in shops or food depots back in the USSR. “Lyova, come by tomorrow, we’ll have some herring delivered,” — we heard those familiar intonations. And in the display window there was a sign for Americans: “Come in. We also speak English in our store.”
It was interesting to take the subway back from Brighton to Manhattan and watch how the loudly Russian-speaking crowd in the carriage gradually gave way to English-speaking passengers, and by the time we reached Brooklyn Bridge, Russian speech was no longer heard. It was as if we had traveled by subway from the Soviet Union to America.
After our performance with Kabakov at the museum in Prato, near Florence, our entire group of Russian artists was invited to the home of the well-known Italian collector Giuliano Gori. Walking through his vast and beautiful garden, surrounded by many masterpieces from his collection, Ilya and I reached a cliff with a stunning panoramic view of Florence. Ilya immediately came up with an installation: an outhouse, like those behind rural homes in some provincial Russian town, without a door and overlooking Florence. The audience would see only the back wall of the structure and hear the contented humming of a person sitting inside. Naturally, we immediately began improvising about what sounds should come from the toilet. We concluded that, given the beauty of the landscape, what should be heard from behind the wall would be softly hummed arias from great Italian operas, for example, from L'elisir d'amore by Gaetano Donizetti.
It’s a pity that Ilya Kabakov didn’t reach an agreement with Gori, but he did eventually realize this idea, albeit in a different version, and donated it to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Ilya Kabakov had an extraordinary talent for conveying the atmosphere of the time and the country in which we lived. With sarcasm and a deep rejection of all that absurdity, he captured the sheer irrationality of the system with great precision. In the mid-1980s, Kabakov created an entire series of New Year postcards and signs, with little bunnies, elephants, steamships — all in the style of illustrations for preschool children, yet through these cheerful images of animals, new housing blocks, and Father Frost, he was essentially telling everything and everyone to go to hell.
I arranged with the director of the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius to exhibit this series there. Ilya is the godfather of my daughter Maria, and she decided to show her classmates what he does. The whole class went to the exhibition. But the attendants absolutely refused to let them into the hall with Ilya’s works, insisting that children must not see, let alone read, them under any circumstances… Meanwhile, the Vilnius audience received the exhibition enthusiastically. Given the attitude of Lithuanian residents toward Soviet authority, it was no surprise that people were bursting out laughing in front of Kabakov’s works.
A few years earlier, I had already tried to organize an exhibition for my friends in Vilnius. A good acquaintance of mine, Laima Lukashevichene, held a high-ranking position at the Republican Library. In the foyer on the second floor, she had begun organizing art exhibitions. An intelligent and cultured person, she understood art very well and judged it as good or bad — not by whether it was allowed or forbidden. We agreed to bring paintings from Moscow by Erik Bulatov and Kabakov. Everything was planned, posters and invitations were printed. But just a few days before the opening, officers from the KGB in Vilnius came to Laima and категорically forbade her from exhibiting the works of the Moscow artists. By that time, the journal A–Ya magazine had begun to be published in France, dedicated to unofficial Soviet art, and works by artists of this circle were banned from public display.
Poor Laima was terribly frightened and nearly lost her job. She called me and asked me to come, and we spent a long time walking around the library. At first, I simply couldn’t understand why she refused to go ahead with the exhibition when just the day before we had been enthusiastically discussing all the details. And only when I directly asked whether the local authorities had forbidden her to hold the exhibition did she explain everything, adding that she had promised not to tell anyone about it.
Ilya Kabakov’s studio in Moscow was also a special place. Ilya was constantly organizing something there — gatherings of Moscow and St. Petersburg poets, presentations of albums and new works, performances by musicians. Without a doubt, Kabakov’s talent brought many creative people together around him. Not only poets and artists gravitated toward him, but also collectors and representatives of Western museums and galleries.
Ilya managed to be everywhere and do everything. His energy seemed limitless. I witnessed this many times while living in his studio. In the mornings, while working, he would simultaneously answer an endless stream of phone calls. During the day, we would dash across the boulevard to the café of the editorial office of Literaturnaya Gazeta. We would have lunch there with Nellya Loginova, who edited all of Ilya’s texts, and with a wonderful man — the photographer Yuri Rost.
After lunch, we would load my drums into Ilya’s car and head off to a concert at some Moscow club. Kabakov’s Zhiguli was itself a work of art. All the scratches and dents it had acquired in Moscow courtyards, Ilya would paint over himself with a brush, believing there was no point wasting time going to a repair shop. It looked no worse than the famous BMW painted by Robert Rauschenberg.
In the evening, after the concert, our whole group would move to Rechnoy Vokzal, to a building on Festivalnaya Street where many artists lived. Either to Galya and Ivan Chuikov, or to Vika and Ilya Kabakov; or we would sit late into the night at the home of Nina and Eduard Gorokhovsky. And it was there, at the table, that Ilya would finally switch off and fall asleep — his eyelids closing, his eyes turning into narrow slits. At such moments, he resembled a well-known toy — a good-natured Chinese figurine nodding its head in agreement with everything being said.
Ilya always helped me, as he did many of his friends and acquaintances. At the same time, he very wisely and delicately avoided anything that might distract him from his work or interfere with his paintings, installations, and all the ideas he was developing. He had a clear ability to choose what was essential and important from the constant поток of things that came his way every day.
In his book The Sixties, Ilya Kabakov gave such a categorical assessment of some of his friends and colleagues that he made many enemies.This became especially evident after Perestroika, when the market opened up and everyone quite understandably wanted to exhibit in the world’s leading museums and sell their work.
The situation changed dramatically after the Sotheby's Moscow Auction 1988. The success on the art market of Grisha Bruskin and Kabakov split what had seemed an inseparable circle of friends into two camps. People who had once been very close no longer wanted to speak to each other. And on the contrary, artists who had never previously communicated united in their dislike of Ilya. More precisely, it would be fair to say it was simple envy on the part of colleagues who had not (at least at that time) received recognition in the art world. But I am convinced that, with time, recognition will come. And it is already beginning to come.
Ilya Kabakov has clearly integrated himself into the contemporary art market and distanced himself from many of his former friends from the Moscow studios. He simply has no time for casual socializing. Most of his communication is now with people necessary for his work or business. But sometimes awkward situations arise, and equally talented artists who happen to share gallery space with Kabakov can suffer because of it.
In 2008, at the commercial fair Art Basel Miami Beach, I was standing near one of Ilya’s paintings when a visitor asked how much it cost. “Eight hundred thousand dollars,” the gallerist replied, but then, looking at the visitor and realizing he probably couldn’t afford it, added: “We also have works by another Russian artist — Pavel Pepperstein. He’s a friend of Kabakov’s and is much cheaper.” The visitor turned out to be wiser than the seller: “I usually buy works by artists I like, not their friends,” he replied. Pasha is a talented artist, yet he ended up in Kabakov’s shadow because of the gallerist’s foolishness — someone ready to sell anything just to make money.
Many artists cannot objectively understand or accept Kabakov’s success and tend to see him as someone who almost controls the popularity and market demand for Russian artists worldwide. Undoubtedly, as Kabakov’s fame grew, many people around him, acquaintances and friends, began doing business in art. But I don’t think they pay much attention to his opinion. These people know perfectly well how to make money and where to invest it for profit. Some artists understand this, while others blame Kabakov for all their “failures” in the art market. However, no one in the West reacts to him this way: there, he is one of the most popular and respected artists today.
And after all, the test of fame is not something easily endured, especially by those with strong ambitions. Only a few can pass through it without losses. One must have a character like Pablo Picasso to remain true to oneself, regardless of how famous one becomes.
“Vladimir Petrovich!” — addressed me a short, solidly built man, firmly grounded and with a sharp look. “Allow me to introduce myself — Prigov, Dmitri Alexandrovich!” That is how I met the poet and artist Dmitri Prigov. Dmitri Alexandrovich, as he preferred to be called. In the end, even those closest to him addressed him this way, respectfully. And naturally, he in turn addressed everyone else by their first name and patronymic. “Allow me to invite you and this wonderful company to my home. It’s nearby — in Belyayevo.” And the “wonderful company” consisted of about twenty-five people. We barely managed to squeeze into his small room. Dmitri Alexandrovich read his poems to us, highly original and fascinating, with unexpected “jazz breaks” at the end.
At the time, I was searching for possible intersections between music and the spoken word. The sonoristic style in which Prigov read his poetry turned out to be extremely musical. His voice, his manner of performance, was not quite singing, not merely authorial recitation, but rather a kind of musical instrument, perfectly blending with percussion and other instruments. He invented what he called the “cry of the mad Kikimora,” could perform no worse than contemporary rappers, or suddenly spend half an hour repeating a single phrase in a long, meditative Tibetan chant. His innate ear allowed him to do absolutely anything with his voice.
We traveled a great deal with Dmitri Prigov, performing in different countries. Three of our programs were released on CD in Lithuania and the United States. Prigov blended brilliantly into a quartet of poets alongside Yang Lian, Kerry Shawn Keys, and Sigitas Geda, when we performed a sonatina for the voices of four poets, oboe, double bass, and percussion at the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2002.
Dmitri Alexandrovich once gave me a pair of small Tibetan cymbals. Ancient, with the purest sound, worn thin over many years by the fingers of Tibetan monks, they can be heard in most of my programs. Their voice not only brings into my percussion the resonance of those monasteries; for me, it is also inseparably linked with the image of the Poet — with his syncopated “pointillistic” precision, and at the same time with a somehow unfathomable ability to convey a mantra stretched across time, extending into the vastness of space and history.
The first time I met Oleg Grigoriev was in Leningrad. He crawled into Gavrilchik’s studio on Vasilyevsky Island on his knees, where a large group of us was gathered. “Guys!” Oleg said, looking at each of us in turn. “Lend me three rubles!”
An incredibly funny and immensely talented poet, he once called my room at the Oktyabrskaya Hotel early in the morning and woke me up, asking me to come downstairs and buy a copy of Pionerskaya Pravda.“What are you doing up so early, Oleg — and why?..” I asked.“My poems are published there,” Oleg Grigoriev said joyfully.
He was happy: at last, in the Soviet Union, his poems had been published — even if no one really paid attention to their deeper meaning, treating them simply as children’s verses and riddles.
He is a true gem of the St. Petersburg artistic community. His ironic and parodic poems and paintings are loved by everyone in the art circles of both St. Petersburg and Moscow. At the same time, he has never stood out in any ostentatious way: he lives modestly in his communal apartment on Vosstaniya Street with his beloved wife Tamara, and lovingly raises his granddaughter Efrosinya — my goddaughter.
In some ways, Vladlen reminds me of Venedikt Yerofeyev. Perhaps it is the same ironic and parodic tone in both poetry and art, along with a fondness for unusual cocktails. Yerofeyev never made it to our concert, although he honestly admitted that he had intended to, while Gavrila, as we all affectionately call Gavrilchik, did come. He even brought along a painting titled “Figure Skating” as a gift.
All of this took place at the Variety Theatre near Finlyandsky Railway Station. I immediately placed the painting on a chair at the front of the stage for everyone to see, and Vladimir Chekasin humorously played along with it, dancing around and performing a buffoonish polka on two flutes.After the concert, as we stood in the square near the famous armored car monument associated with Vladimir Lenin, Vladlen asked me:“Volodya, come on now — don’t you remember who arrived on that thing, and from where?”
Once, while staying overnight in Ilya Kabakov’s studio, I heard an early-morning knocking on the metal entrance door of the attic. When I opened it, I saw a stout man literally covered in paintings. Sweating — after all, climbing up to Ilya’s attic in the “Russia” building was quite a feat — the visitor exhaled: “Kabakov?” “No,” I replied. “Kabakov will be here soon, I’m his friend.” “Will he give me a painting? Can he give me a painting?” the visitor continued, breathing heavily and looking at me with the kindest eyes, like a character from the film The Blues Brothers (as if the fate of the gift depended on me). “Well, alright, I’ll come back later. I’ll run over to Steinberg first. He promised to give me something. Then I’ll come back again.”
This was Matti Milius, a collector from Tartu; in this way he assembled an entire museum in his own home. A true non-materialist and connoisseur — he had no money at all, yet artists recognized his genuine love for art and always gave him small gifts. From these, he built an excellent collection that undoubtedly enriched the artistic world of Estonia.
“Volodia, can you imagine — I was given six works,” Matti told me in his charming Estonian accent when we met in Vilnius in the autumn of 2006. Still just as excited, with shining eyes, he came to meet me in the museum café, enthusiastically recounting his journey through the studios of Vilnius artists. “Today I’ll also run over to Algis Kuras and Evgeny Zuckerman — they promised me something too.”
At that time, there were also other collectors who understood the value of what underground artists were creating. Some organized exhibitions in their homes, keeping part of the works in return. Others celebrated their birthdays several times a year, inviting artists in the hope of receiving a drawing or a painting as a gift. I often witnessed such performances.
Once, one of these collectors called Ilya and invited us to her birthday. Ilya chose a drawing as a present, and we went to visit her. Approaching the apartment, we saw artists standing on the stairwell with paintings and drawings in their hands, waiting their turn to congratulate the hostess and present their gifts. A little later, Ilya and I realized that we had already been there three or four months earlier — for the very same occasion. With his characteristic irony, Ilya asked the hostess when she had actually been born.
“Today,” she replied with a sweet smile. “And last time it was my name day.”
“Ahhh…” was all we could say, astonished by such an inventive method of acquiring artwork.
But one can understand the artists. This woman had a reputation for being close to diplomatic circles, and they had at least some hope of placing their works through her. It wasn’t money that formed the basis, although it certainly mattered, but the opportunity to show their art. For an artist, the reaction of the viewer is essential: to feel needed, to avoid stagnation, and to keep moving forward.
That is why home viewings and exhibitions were so frequent and popular. Those days are unforgettable, after looking through albums in Ilya Kabakov’s studio, we would all head together to the studios of Erik Bulatov and Oleg Vasiliev, to Ivan Chuikov, or Eduard Steinberg, to Eduard Gorokhovsky or Vladimir Yankilevsky. And in the evening, they would all come to us, to a concert by our trio, and then we would present our new ideas to them.
This circle of artists, like many others in the Soviet Union, had no chance of getting an official exhibition, let alone selling their works. All the “acquisition funds” of the Ministry of Culture and the opportunities to exhibit were divided among the officially recognized artists, those who were members of the governing board of the Union of Artists of the USSR. The system resembled that of the Communist Party: the leadership lived off the dues of all the other members across the vast country. Ordinary members, at best, were given a chance to show their works in a local exhibition hall. As for unofficial artists, they had no chances at all.
Later, after the scandalous Bulldozer Exhibition in Moscow and the exhibition at the Nevsky District Club (Gaza Club) in Leningrad, the Soviet authorities apparently realized that there was a problem that needed to be addressed. The City Committee of Graphic Artists was established on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street in Moscow, and a few other venues were allocated for exhibitions of unofficial artists. Of course, all of this was completely controlled by the authorities, and the system reminded me of the situation with the “Neringa” café in Vilnius. But the artists “kicked back,” as Kabakov would say, as best they could. Some had already emigrated. Through such “birthdays,” through acquaintances in diplomatic circles, or through visiting collectors, many managed to place their works — either in Western museums or in private collections.
For collectors who came to the USSR at that time and understood the value of underground art, it was a golden era. The works cost next to nothing compared to the prices that followed after the Sotheby's Moscow Auction 1988.
Buying a painting for a collector is a major event, unless, of course, he is just a simple reseller. One has to fall in love with the artwork, and then comes that feverish desire to have it at home, hanging on the wall. After that begin careful negotiations with the artist or the gallery owner.
I watched in New York how Ronald Feldman, the owner of one of the major galleries, sold works to potential clients. In his gallery, of course, there were no prices displayed anywhere, but with a professional eye he would immediately assess the buyer: how well they understood what was hanging on the walls, and what their… purchasing power might be. Only after that would he name a price. Of course, this too is business. But at least the people invited to the opening didn’t know this: they came not to a marketplace, but to an exhibition — to look at the works and congratulate the artist.
And Feldman, like all gallerists of that school, had to truly be in love with the artist and their work. He often organized exhibitions of works that, in principle, could not be sold. That was the case with our story with Ilya Kabakov, when in 1992 we created the installation “Incident in the Museum, or Music of Water” at his gallery. He was delighted by the idea and helped us spread the myth about the artist Stepan Yakovlevich Koshelev from Barnaul. With great enthusiasm he explained to visitors that he had discovered an unknown Russian artist, brought his paintings to New York — but then misfortune struck (a “leak,” as Ilya called it) — water began dripping from the ceiling…
It was Ronald Feldman who first began playing a prank on Marina Bessonova — a specialist in Impressionism from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. We had no choice but to join in. When she asked what we were doing there, Ilya said that we had come to help Ronald hang Koshelev’s paintings. Feldman happily continued the story about discovering a brilliant artist from Barnaul and, having reached an agreement with his widow, bringing the works to New York.
Marina stood in front of the paintings, which Ilya had actually copied from photographs in old Soviet magazines, and spoke about the artist’s mastery, about the influence of the French Impressionists on him. It was getting late, and the works were poorly lit; otherwise, she would have immediately distinguished the hand of the Impressionists from that of Kabakov. We began to feel embarrassed about the prank and looked for a good moment to confess.
Later, we went to show Marina where the new building of the Guggenheim Museum SoHo was located. An intelligent and well-educated person, she spoke with pain about what was happening in Russia. When we finally confessed the prank, she fell silent for a moment. But in the end, she appreciated the joke and said, “Well done, guys!” After all, it took dim lighting and dark green walls to fool a specialist of her level.
When we were working at Ronald Feldman’s gallery, Ilya Kabakov introduced me to the artist Donald Judd. We visited him at his place — in a former factory building in the very center of New York, in SoHo. The building, like much in the city — had a small footprint but extended upward, like a room stacked upon a room, perfectly reflecting Judd’s work: vertical structures resembling boxes placed one above another. Even the old factory elevator had been preserved, where you had to turn a handle to reach the upper floors.
Donald lived as if inside his own works: he slept in a bed of his own design, sat at a table and on chairs he had constructed himself. On the ground floor was the studio; above it — the kitchen; higher still the bedroom; then a living room; and further up — a gallery with an extraordinary collection of major American artists from the 1950s–1970s, with whom Judd had been friends and about whom, as a former critic, he had written for The New York Times.
A couple of times, Donald came to see us while we were working at Feldman’s gallery. He would sit on the floor by the wall and watch as I adjusted the drops falling from the ceiling into pots. “This is already enough,” he told me. “It can exist perfectly well on its own — just water, a bucket, and sound.” He repeated almost word for word what Grisha Bruskin had said when he visited us a few days earlier.
At that time, it had never even crossed my mind that I would begin creating installations myself. I was simply glad to help Kabakov — he had an abundance of ideas, and I happily took part in bringing them to life, using my experience as a musician, as a percussionist. Even though this was already my second collaboration with Ilya, I did not imagine that it would be followed by a whole series of my own works.
Vitaly Patsyukov is an exceptionally intelligent man and a rare erudite. His passion for jazz made him a brilliant improviser — in the sense that true improvisation, like in jazz, is based on a deep and thorough knowledge of the material. Standing in front of an artist’s work, Vitaly can tell you everything about how it was created and how the artist’s thinking evolved.
He is an indispensable curator and organizer of exhibitions and performances. In a tiny lecture hall at the Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, Vitaly would speak about films that might seem lost in a sea of mass-produced mediocrity, yet each of them is a gem in the history of cinema. In his apartment, he keeps a remarkable collection of jazz records and books, which he generously gives away to his younger colleagues at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts.
I once attended his conversation with students about the art of Kazimir Malevich. After that, it is simply impossible not to become interested in, and fall in love with, art. The texts written by Patsyukov may seem difficult to some, but this is more a reflection of the fact that by the end of the 20th century we had grown accustomed to simplified descriptions, lacking analytical depth and the search for historical roots and parallels.
When Ilya Kabakov brought me to Vadim Sidur, I saw before me an artist who seemed to understand everything about this life. An artist who felt a deep responsibility for what was happening in the world — not detached, but one who absorbed all human pain, especially the pain of someone who had gone through war and concentration camps.
In his semi-basement studio, I did not see a single “incidental” work. Most of his pieces were made from improvised materials — water and sewage pipes, and other objects that seemed useless to anyone else. Each sculpture carried a profound meaning, and in most cases, a sense of pain for what had been happening in the country at that time.
Vadim Sidur never traveled outside the USSR. In 1980, when he learned that I was going to West Berlin for concerts, he asked me to go and see what his work looked like, a sculpture that had recently been installed there in the very center of the city. The West Germans had erected his monument in memory of those who died in World War II, yet Vadim Sidur himself had no opportunity to travel and be present at its installation. An extraordinary man — he didn’t even ask me to photograph it, only to see it!
When I returned from Berlin and came to his studio, he questioned me in great detail, asking about every angle and perspective. What interested him was not a flat, documentary photograph, but a spatial, three-dimensional perception from all sides.
In the 1970s, he worked as the head of the recording studio at the Latvian State Conservatory. Many musicians specifically wanted to be recorded by Martins Saulespurens. He has an exceptional natural ear and impeccable taste — the true guarantee of high-quality sound, whether of an instrument or a voice. Even with the “prehistoric” equipment of that time, he did everything possible to avoid distortion. (In Moscow, sound engineers like Viktor Babushkin and Pyotr Kondrashin, the son of Kirill Kondrashin, had a similar reputation.) His dedication to sound quality remained with him even after the collapse of the USSR, when Saulespurens moved to California and founded the microphone company Blue Microphones in Los Angeles. Today, their microphones are among the most sought-after by vocalists.
Martins loves jazz, plays drums in his spare time, but most importantly, during the Soviet era, he assembled a record collection unmatched by anyone else in the country.
He is an incredibly calm person. In all our years of friendship, I never saw him lose his temper or raise his voice — except once. It was in the mid-1970s, when we were riding an electric train from Riga to his summer house in Carnikava. Since I don’t speak Latvian, we were, of course, speaking Russian. Sitting opposite us was a middle-aged Latvian man who occasionally inserted remarks into our conversation, trying to explain something, and then suddenly launched into a long, aggressive tirade in Latvian. It felt as though he was about to start a fight.
Martins turned red and began speaking to him sharply. I only remember one phrase he repeated several times: “Sarkanais dirsējs.” Later I learned it meant something like “red-backed bastard” — a reference in Latvia to the Latvian Riflemen who had served the Bolsheviks and helped save Vladimir Lenin, and with him the entire Soviet authority.
Our fellow passenger got up and left, still muttering to himself. Martins then explained that, having heard us speaking Russian, the man had angrily projected all his problems onto us — onto me, essentially. Perhaps he assumed that Martins would support him, or maybe he thought we were both Russians. Martins, however, made it clear to him that not all Russians are Soviet, and that instead of attacking the first person he heard speaking Russian, he might rather thank his own grandfather, thanks to people like him, the communists had settled in Latvia as if it were their home.
It has become a tradition that every time I come to Paris, I call Natasha and Erik and visit them on Rue Greneta. I climb the typically Parisian narrow wooden staircase, worn and slightly slanted with age, into a small and very cozy studio. I always enjoy looking at Erik’s new works, and then we go out for a walk, either to the Centre Pompidou, just five minutes from the Bulatovs’ home, or to another museum, or simply wander through the city. Erik tells me the history of Parisian buildings and streets — so vividly and in such detail, as if he had been born there.
And this is no surprise. A remarkably refined and deeply professional artist, he wants to understand everything thoroughly, to grasp every detail, to study the history of a character or a place he chooses for a painting, or the history of the city and country in which he lives at a given moment. I have never seen so many sketches and preparatory drawings for future works among any of my friends. It feels as though he was born with a pencil in his hand, having absorbed the finest traditions of draftsmanship. His recent works are especially striking — large-format pieces executed in pencil.
During the Soviet period, Erik was undoubtedly one of the most uncompromising underground artists. All of his works from that time, such as “Danger,” “I Live — I See,” “Glory to the CPSU,” and others, are marked by open irony, created without any fear of persecution from the authorities.
He is one of the finest American drummers.
We met in 1986 during our trio’s tour in New York. I already knew the sound of Andrew’s drums from recordings with Cecil Taylor. And I immediately recognized him standing just a couple of meters in front of the stage. As Andrew later told me, he had never seen or heard Russian musicians before. He really liked our concert. Soon we discovered many points of connection in our shared “percussion world,” and began thinking about performing as a duo.
After two years of negotiations, in 1988 Gosconcert organized a tour of our duo in the USSR, timing it to coincide with the meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Andrew and I created our own drummers’ “summit” and performed eleven concerts — in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Vilnius, Kaunas, and Riga. At the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, two drummers played for nearly two thousand listeners.
Without a doubt, it was the best kind of diplomacy between the two countries.
Andrew Cyrille was one of those people whom in Russia they would call a “rubakha-paren” — an open-hearted, easygoing, genuinely warm person. And at the same time, a top-level professional in our field. We became such close friends that we immediately entered each other’s circles of family and friends.
Our concerts were received very warmly by audiences. This was no longer the usual exchange tour — like a Russian folk song and dance ensemble in the U.S. and an American military brass band in the USSR. For the first time in the history of the two countries, there was a truly joint ensemble performing together, even if it consisted of just two musicians. Previously, such collaboration had only been possible at the level of soloists in classical music and ballet. And here, on stage, were two drummers — an African American and a Russian, playing together with genuine enjoyment and entertaining the audience. No politics, no propaganda — just music.
After another two years of negotiations, in 1990 Andrew Cyrille and I went on a return tour across cities in the United States and Canada. Everywhere we were received just as warmly as in Russia. Most American audiences were curious to witness the musical interaction between two drummers coming from opposite sides of a world where the “Iron Curtain” was living out its final months.
But for me, performing in America was a bit more difficult. I felt that the audience was often more interested in a kind of sporting competition, who could play faster, louder, rather than in the music itself. The politics that had been drilled into people’s minds through newspapers and television in both countries had clearly left its mark: ours must be first, ours must be better.
I shared this feeling with Andrew, and he told me that he had felt exactly the same way during our concerts in Russia…
A magnificent musician with incredible energy — she was meant to be a jazz artist. Her Georgian temperament transforms and reshapes any material, from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn to George Gershwin and Scott Joplin. In some ways, she reminds me of the great pianist Glenn Gould. Her interpretations of classical music, especially her cadenzas, are full of improvisation. I imagine that listeners who sit at concerts with a score in hand must be fainting from shock.
Liana constantly insists that she cannot improvise, yet in reality she improvises far better than many jazz musicians.
A favorite in Georgia, she skillfully used the authorities’ favorable attitude toward her, channeling her energy and connections into organizing music festivals in her country. First came the “Night Serenades” in Pitsunda, followed by festivals in Tbilisi and Borjomi. Liana invites leading performers from around the world, not only from classical music, but also from theater, poetry, and, of course, jazz — in which I have always gladly helped her.
In 1990, when unrest began in the country and no one seemed to care about musicians, Liana Isakadze managed to take the entire State Chamber Orchestra of Georgia, which she directed, to Germany. Along with them went their extended families: grandparents, children, relatives — the whole large Georgian clan. It was a heroic act. Having reached an agreement with the automobile company Audi and the city of Ingolstadt, she secured affordable social housing and stable salaries for all of them.
Yura and I became friends immediately after meeting in the 1970s at a festival in Tbilisi. An incredibly intelligent and kind person, Yura Rost is the soul of any gathering. Everyone loves and respects him — and he, in turn, loves and respects everyone, not only his friends, but even those he may meet just once in his life.
Perhaps thanks to his camera, Yura has become like a “planet” — a center that draws together people of many different professions. He values mastery in a person regardless of what they do. And he describes himself as a portrait made up of many small portraits of the people he befriends and photographs. One can imagine this as a remarkable painting in the style of Pavel Filonov.
Each person he has encountered has shaped his worldview, and in turn, each has received from him something unique — something that belongs only to Yuri Rost.
Last updated on 24.03.2026
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