It turned out that the period I had tried to put earlier would have to be replaced with a comma.
What you have just read was previously published in two different books. The book Trio was published in Russian in 1998 by Baltos lankos in Lithuania, and later reissued in Moscow and in Japan (Hosei University). The book Tam-Tam was published in Moscow (NLO, 2009).
Eleven years have passed, and we decided to combine both books into one. In addition, a fifth chapter written today has been added, resulting in a rather conceptual book, like much of what I do, with several forewords, afterwords, and references to the past and the future. In short — drumming.
Today, for some people, especially those born after perestroika, much of this may be difficult to understand. Who today can grasp the “games of chess” with the authorities and repressive agencies? Only those who caught at least a glimpse of that time in their lifetime, or people interested in history. It seems wild, of course, that one had to obtain permission from the authorities to travel abroad, and that our whole life resembled George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. Fortunately, today this is already in the past—a part of the history of our country, society, and culture.
I have added a little to what was written earlier, based on what has happened in recent years. There have been many concerts, trips, events, and meetings, but I have tried to focus only on those that are of greatest interest to me. I hope they will be of interest to the reader as well.
In 2009, I received an invitation to perform at the MaerzMusik festival in Berlin, marking the 100th anniversary of Futurism. My fascination with this movement dates back to my youth, largely thanks to the poetry of Velimir Khlebnikov. In his work, the percussive, sonoristic sound often prevails over verbal meaning.
For Berlin, I decided to prepare a program based on Khlebnikov’s poetry — not as an illustration, of course, but rather as an attempt to convey its dramaturgy and Khlebnikov’s distinctive intonation. Almost all of his poems are a kind of brilliant percussion in terms of sound and intonation. Even the journal they published was called The Futurists’ Drum.
My concert took place on March 20 at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. The French ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg performed first, and of course I went to listen to them and greet them.
Memories came rushing back of my naïve attempt in 1975 to go to France to study with Professor Jean Batigne. He founded this ensemble and was its long-time director, and they were, of course, the finest performers of 20th-century percussion music — from Karlheinz Stockhausen to Valentin Silvestrov.
There was no one left from the original lineup except Keiko Nakamura, who immediately recognized and remembered me. A magnificent performer, she joined the ensemble in the 1970s and was a student and protégé of Jean Batigne. By then, she was the most senior member of the group.
After their performance, while I was setting up my instruments for my concert, I could hear them discussing and analyzing the program they had just played. Again and again, I heard: “Remember how the professor explained to us how this should be played?”
And I immediately recalled how, in 1974, in a small room behind the stage of the Vilnius Philharmonic, Jean Batigne shared with me his secrets of playing percussion instruments. I still follow his advice to this day.
During my concert in Berlin, from the stage I noticed a man sitting in the front row who was reacting very emotionally to what I was doing. It was the composer Valentin Silvestrov. One can safely say, and many would agree with me, a genius.
As it turned out, he was also a guest of the festival and was performing his works in the same hall two days later. He had already been a legend for me and my friends since the days of the “Kyiv Avant-Garde” group in the 1960s. And of course, his cycle Silent Songs, his Bagatelles, and everything he has written — listening to his music is a true pleasure.
Valentin Vasilyevich lives in Kyiv. Life has worked out in such a way that I often find myself there. We stay in fairly regular contact, exchanging news about music. It has even become a tradition to take turns inviting each other to a Georgian restaurant in the center of Kyiv. And at every meeting I receive an incredible gift from him — a CD of his music, which he records himself at home. Valentin Silvestrov is a wonderful pianist and writes songs based on poems by poets he loves, which he performs himself.
On my studio desk in Vilnius, I already have a considerable collection of these CDs, and I listen to them regularly. They are, of course, masterpieces.
The Berlin concert Thinking of Khlebnikov was released in 2010 by NoBusiness Records in Lithuania, with the support of Igor Romanenkov and the MaerzMusik festival. Igor lived in Odesa and taught economics at the university, but his true life and passion were in literature and music.
A remarkable and highly erudite person, he defended his doctoral dissertation at Moscow University based on the program of our Trio with Ganelin and Chekasin, Poi Seque. He also wrote a treatise on the work of Modest Mussorgsky titled Khovanshchina, I repeat — Khovanshchina.
Igor was a major specialist in Khlebnikov’s work and wrote many analytical texts on his poetry. It was Romanenkov who, long before the Berlin festival, drew my attention to Khlebnikov’s poetry and sent me numerous texts that, in his view, could resonate with my percussion.
He wrote the text for the CD booklet, and as the final track on the CD we included a file containing his work of Velimir Khlebnikov.
Apparently, my urge to work with poets and their texts is still impossible to eradicate. No actor can ever read a text better than its author. Over the past few years, Lev and I have organized a whole series of performances based on texts he has written—mostly at book fairs and festivals in Druskininkai, Vilnius, Moscow, London, Krasnoyarsk, and elsewhere. Rubinstein is a master of the rhythmic organization of phrases and the pauses between them. It is always engaging and full of drive.
Intolerant of authoritarian power and what he sees as a civilization of evil, he is at the same time charmingly sentimental, and for friends he often enjoys singing Soviet lyrical songs from the 1940s–50s, and sings them beautifully.
“In this country, there are always extremes, and somehow always in the same direction. Parks are closed for incomprehensible reasons, so Ira and I walk around the courtyard, like dogs,” — Lev told me when I called him a couple of days ago to ask how he was coping with the quarantine in Moscow.
Lev Rubinstein and I flew to London in April 2011 for a literary festival. John Cumming and Annette Moreau came to the concert, and I was very happy to see them again. Since 1984, when John brought our Trio to London, we had maintained a warm and friendly relationship, and I had performed several times at his London Jazz Festival.
John suggested we meet the next day, saying he had an idea to discuss. We met, had lunch at one of London’s wonderful restaurants, and then went to Kings Place, to the office of the London Sinfonietta. This orchestra has existed since the 1960s and specializes in performing contemporary music. John proposed that I prepare a program with them for the upcoming festival in November 2011.
Кто-то из присутствующих на этой встрече сказал мне, чтобы я был внимателен, так как музыканты симфониетты практически не импровизируют. То есть они, конечно, играют алеаторическую музыку, но это импровизация с готовым, предложенным композитором материалом. И это скорее вариации, нежели импровизация. Их нельзя просто отпустить в свободную импровизацию, так как для этого нужно иметь джазовую школу и композиторский талант, а они все-таки исполнители.
At the office, we were met by the orchestra’s director, Andrew Burke. The space was quite large, in a modern building, with a concert hall on the ground floor and numerous rehearsal studios with glass doors, and sometimes even walls, so that as you walked by, you could see who was rehearsing, and sometimes even hear them. For some reason, it all reminded me of a factory for producing music.
Andrew led us into a meeting room, where staff responsible for rehearsals, musicians, financial arrangements, and other matters were already waiting. We discussed all the details, John signed the contract, and that is how I became Artist in Residence of the London Sinfonietta.
The idea of the program was called Written/Unwritten—some parts composed, others improvised. Exactly what I love. When the question arose about which instrumentalists I would like to invite, I asked what instruments they had available. I was told they work on a contract basis and can, in principle, invite anyone. London is full of excellent professionals.
Someone present at the meeting advised me to be careful, noting that the musicians of the Sinfonietta hardly ever improvise. They do, of course, perform aleatoric music, but that is improvisation based on pre-composed material—it is more variation than true improvisation. You cannot simply let them loose into free improvisation; that requires a jazz background and a composer’s instinct, whereas they are primarily performers.
After returning to Vilnius, I developed the concept of the program, trying to fix as much as possible in notation and signs. A few months later, in November, I flew back to London. I had ten days for rehearsals, and after just a couple of sessions it became clear that the orchestra’s musicians could play absolutely anything.
The concert took place at the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, one of London’s best venues. In the first half, the British pianist Matthew Bourne performed with the orchestra; in the second half, my program was presented. The Sinfonietta fully confirmed its reputation as a group of consummate professionals. They played everything exactly as conceived and written, and the audience received us warmly.
Yet I still felt something essential was missing — the drive, as we call it in jazz. That energy with which jazz musicians experience and share what is happening on stage with one another. Then I recalled the warning from one of the staff during our meeting. That was my mistake. I should definitely have included at least one jazz musician in the ensemble. In fact, this is what I usually do in many of my programs with the Lithuanian Art Orchestra, inviting classical musicians into a jazz setting. Their ability to perform within a given structure, combined with jazz drive and groove, as we say, always produces strong results.
The London Sinfonietta, of course, played everything professionally, accurately, and without the slightest mistake, but too sterile, detached, and cold. They can read and perform notes, aleatoric signs, and structures in any way imaginable, even upside down, and it will sound flawless, yet there will be no life or drive. That, after all, belongs to soloists, and many of my friends in classical music, with whom I have performed, possess it. Not to mention legends such as Glenn Gould, Vladimir Horowitz, Jascha Heifetz, and others.
In the end, the first part of the program’s concept, Written, was certainly realized, but the second part, Unwritten, alas, was not.
I recall a story told by Timofei Dokshitzer, a remarkable classical trumpeter who spent his final years in Vilnius. As a soloist, he had toured the world. When he came to New York on tour, he was invited to a jazz club to hear Miles Davis.
“When he came out and began to play, from the perspective of a classical trumpeter everything was wrong: the sound production, the purity of tone, the carelessness of execution, but after a couple of minutes it became clear: he was a genius.”
It was precisely this slight “carelessness”, or, as Valentin Silvestrov puts it, a “fortunate accident”, that I found missing in my work with the London Sinfonietta.
In 2012, two major anniversaries were celebrated back to back: the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy and the 100th anniversary of John Cage. And my long-held dream — to perform Debussy’s preludes with Lyubimov in a version for percussion and piano, finally came true. We called the program Originals and Deconstructions. In the first half, Alexei performed solo; in the second, we presented almost the same program, but together with my percussion.
Debussy’s influence on jazz musicians such as Bill Evans and Paul Bley is immense. And on later, iconic composers like John Cage, even more so. This was the threshold of sonorism, and most importantly, the pause became a full-fledged element of music.
Over the years, Alexei Lyubimov and I performed Debussy’s preludes several times: at the Rachmaninoff Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, in Vilnius at Piano.lt Hall, at the Moravian Autumn Festival in Brno, and our last concert was in Paris in February 2019.
In 2018, the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory released a double CD with this program, documenting our work.
As for John Cage, Alexei Lyubimov inhabits his music as if it were his natural environment. He is undoubtedly one of the finest performers of Cage’s music in the world. The festival he organized in Moscow in the autumn of 2012, at the Rachmaninoff Hall and the Small Hall of the Philharmonic, in honor of Cage’s anniversary, brought together some of the best interpreters of this music. I was happy to take part in those concerts, as Cage’s music is, in a way, my native element. Aleatorics— improvisation within a given framework, is exactly my field.
Speaking of John Cage’s anniversary, I recall two more episodes connected with it.
In the autumn, more precisely, on October 8, 2012, I performed at the VILNIUS JAZZ festival with the Lithuanian Art Orchestra. I devised a program dedicated to Cage, which I titled Aleatoric Games for Orchestra, Radio Receiver, and Lecturer. As the lecturer, I invited Petras Geniušas, our outstanding classical pianist, who, alongside his solo career, gladly takes part in other genres and improvises brilliantly.
So, accompanied by the orchestra, Petras read John Cage’s famous lecture Silence, which had recently been translated into Lithuanian. When Petras came on stage, the audience naturally greeted him with applause, assuming he would sit at the piano and perform something with our orchestra. Instead, he walked to a table at the center of the stage, where there was a desk lamp, a radio, and the text of Cage’s lecture. The text became his instrument.
He performed it brilliantly, with full understanding of its meaning, playfully engaging with the words and responding with energy to the orchestral music. Vladimir Chekasin also played a remarkable solo in this program. This concert is still available in the LRT media library, if you’re interested.
A couple of weeks later, another concert dedicated to John Cage took place — at the GAIDA festival in Vilnius. I proposed a program of Cage’s works to the festival, inviting some of our finest performers: Petras Geniušas, this time in his role as pianist; our wonderful soprano Ieva Prudnikovaitė; as well as Artūras Šilalė, Tomas Kulikauskas, and the American poet Kerry Shawn Keys.
Since the festival takes place at various venues across the city, I had the opportunity to choose the hall for our performance. I decided it could only be the Philharmonic. It’s a special place, where many people come not so much for the concerts as to promenade through the foyer during intermission, showing off their outfits and having a drink at the bar. Not everyone, of course, but there are many like that. And not only in Vilnius. It’s an audience that comes for the venue, not for the performer, and naturally believes it understands music better than anyone else. The same, by the way, often happens in opera.
So I felt like stirring things up a little, especially since something like this has always accompanied John Cage’s music, as many listeners simply do not accept or understand it. This is particularly true of Cage’s piece 4’33”, which consists of three movements during which not a single note is played. A perfect example of Zen practice is hearing oneself. As Cage himself put it, absolute silence does not exist; there is a sea of sounds all around. One simply needs to hear them — they are the music.
I suspected that during the performance of this piece in the Philharmonic hall, something would inevitably happen, and I was right. I built the program from various works by Cage, placing “4’33” somewhere in the middle. And of course… around the second minute, a loud male voice from the audience: “Are they going to play anything? Where’s the music? How can they stage something like this in a hall where Beethoven is performed?!” He stormed out noisily, outraged.
In the spring of 2015, Algimantas Miknevičius called me and said he wanted to revive the Lituanika rock festival, which he and his friends had started back in 1985. At that time, many jazz musicians gladly supported the idea and took part in the festival, so it was partly rock and partly jazz.
Algimantas suggested that I perform with a Russian rock musician of my choice. Without hesitation, I named Makarevich. In my view, in Russia the choice is essentially limited to three artists — Yura Shevchuk, Boris Grebenshchikov, and Andrei Makarevich. Also Leonid Fyodorov, who stands quite apart. But Makarevich, Shevchuk, and Grebenshchikov are not rock musicians in the Western sense; they are artists who have created their own style. They are more like singer-poets, closer to performers such as Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen.
Why Andrei Makarevich? He is not just a singer-songwriter, but also an excellent guitarist who can improvise, with strong drive and a solid understanding of the jazz tradition. Many of his songs leave room for jazz improvisation.
This suited me perfectly, and I invited Andrei along with his pianist, Evgeny Bortz, who writes arrangements for his songs and is also a fine improviser. On our side, we had Eugenijus Kanevičius and Liudas Mockūnas — excellent musicians from the Lithuanian Art Orchestra, with whom we often perform as a trio. For the festival, we selected a number of Andrei’s songs and, while preserving their melodic lines, reshaped their form, filling them with joint improvisations and solo cadenzas.
Two years later, in 2017, Andrei suggested creating a program in which he would not sing but instead read his poetry accompanied by music, something I had been doing for many years with Dmitry Prigov, Sigitas Geda, Lev Rubinstein, and other writers. I asked Andrei to send me his poems, and I liked them very much. He is, naturally, similar to only one person — himself. And in the end, recitative is also a kind of song, as Bob Dylan has long demonstrated.
The program was titled About…. It was quite unconventional, if only because audiences had grown so used to Makarevich always singing, whereas in this case he only read his poems and played the guitar. One poem, dedicated to Vasily Aksyonov, did turn into a song, but that was all.
The concert took place at the Congress Hall in Vilnius, and we repeated the same program a few days later in Moscow at the Central House of Artists. It was interesting to watch the somewhat bewildered audience, who had come expecting Makarevich to sing, but instead heard him reading poetry and playing guitar with us. Judging by their reaction, however, they liked it.
It was also surprising to see a few familiar faces who, approaching me before the concert in Moscow, asked how I could perform with Makarevich, given his support for Ukraine. Complete nonsense. The only answer I could give was that this was precisely why I performed with him. I never found out whether they stayed for the concert or left.
In general, many things in Russia have begun to resemble the Soviet Union. It is especially difficult to understand why Russian jazz musicians, and artists in general, have rushed en masse to join the ruling party. Even in the Soviet era, this was not the case. None of us ever joined any party; we stayed as far away from them as possible. I can understand pop musicians — the party feeds and supports them, and they are not needed outside the country, but jazz musicians? Some of them even hold official positions, yet being party members does not make them play or sing any better.
Well done, the Estonians — what a magnificent museum they have built. Modern, beautifully designed by the Finnish architect Pekka Vapaavuori. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of envy. There are numerous exhibitions, lectures, and other events for visitors. Concerts take place in the concert hall every day. It’s always full of visitors, not only Estonians, many come especially from Finland and Sweden. By the way, the Tallinn Philharmonic also hosts interesting concerts every day in several halls, with many touring artists from different countries. It’s hard not to be envious.
In 2016, I worked at this museum in Tallinn for almost three weeks. I had been invited with a large four-month retrospective. I was very nervous, even though I had flown there a few months earlier and the director had introduced me to the technical staff and everyone who would help with the installation, and, most importantly, oversee the works during the exhibition. Almost all installations, except for video, require constant supervision: various motors, fans, water systems, electronic programming, and so on.
When my long-time assistant Raimundas Zobarskas and I arrived in Tallinn, our only concern was how everything would function after the opening. But it turned out that the entire team — from designers and architects to the technical department responsible for installation and maintenance, were outstanding professionals, especially the technical staff. From the very first day, there were no disagreements, and they worked flawlessly. Everything functioned perfectly, and continued to do so for all four months. Of course, I still worried and often called my Tallinn friends, asking them to visit the museum and check on things.
But my concerns were unnecessary — the museum is excellent, and so is the team. Two people, Sirje Helme and Eha Komissarov, are pillars of Estonian museum culture. They brought in the best museum specialists to work at KUMU and also nurtured a new generation of young professional curators there.
Estonian jazz was also a revelation for me, particularly in the person of guitarist Jaak Sooäär and the very distinctive vocalist Kadri Voorand, with whom we performed at the opening of my exhibition. A unique Estonian jazz identity is clearly beginning to emerge.
Together with Vyacheslav Ganelin and Vladimir Chekasin, and, of course, thanks to fate, we were able to reunite and realize all the ideas we had once envisioned. Or almost all of them…
Art, and jazz in particular, is indeed a kind of chemistry, where only the right combination of components (words, colors, sounds) produces the desired result. Any mistake in choosing those components leads to failure. Sitting in the audience, we often witness these chemical reactions, with all their successes and failures.
On February 17, 2017, we performed once again as a trio with Chekasin and Ganelin, on the occasion of being awarded the Lithuanian National Prize. The concert was organized by Liudas Mockūnas and the Lithuanian Jazz Federation. I agreed to take part also because many musicians, our followers and continuers of the Vilnius jazz school, had never seen us perform live. Most of them were born after the trio disbanded in 1987, or were still children at the time. They had never seen this “laboratory”— only heard it on vinyl records and CDs.
That concert fully confirmed the idea that art is a chemical reaction. Despite all the disagreements that had arisen within the trio, especially in the years before Ganelin’s departure to Israel, and despite the long break in playing together, we performed as if our previous concert had taken place just the day before.
The combination of the three of us produced remarkable results, as time has already confirmed. I have experienced that same sense of a positive, creative reaction in other collaborations as well, with Anthony Braxton and György Szabados, for example. In the trio Jones, Jones with Larry Ochs and Mark Dresser — two outstanding musicians from California, with whom we still frequently perform and record. And of course with Volodya Chekasin, with whom I continue to perform often as a duo. We have been playing together for nearly 50 years, and to this day, every concert with him is a discovery for me.
September 2019. This was, of course, much more than just a trip or a concert. I, and all of us, were deeply interested in what this enormous team of physicists is doing there, deep underground, sending tiny proton particles racing around a 27-kilometer ring at a speed of 11,000 revolutions per second. Even if all the drummers in the world gathered together and played at once, we wouldn’t come close to such a speed. It’s something cosmic, almost unimaginable.
My trip was conceived and organized by Ignas Staskevičius, to whom I am very grateful. Ignas is a pediatrician by training, a writer, a successful businessman, and an excellent photographer, as well as the founder of one of Lithuania’s most interesting online platforms, Marathon Field (Maratono laukas). His idea was supported by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From the CERN side, it was welcomed by physicist Professor Christoph Schäfer, who is responsible for international relations, and this is how I was invited as a Guest Artist and stayed for nearly a week at a hotel on the collider’s premises.
At Geneva Airport, I was met by Andrius Krivas, our ambassador to the United Nations. As we drove to the hotel and talked about many things, including poetry, he recited Silver Age poetry in flawless Russian. I must say I was truly impressed, especially by the fact that in 2018 he translated poems by Natalia Gorbanevskaya for the journal Literatūra ir menas. I had known her personally and had long hoped to see her poetry translated into Lithuanian. About ten years earlier, I had tried to arrange this with a publisher, but unfortunately they were not interested. I still have a selection of her poems for Lithuania that she gave me when I visited her in Paris. Andrius Krivas, at least in part, fulfilled that dream.
The CERN staff gave me a wonderful welcome and showed me all the most interesting aspects of their work. I had never seen so many surveillance cameras anywhere before. Gaining access to the site is not simple: at first I was given a temporary pass for one day, and the next morning I received a badge like all the staff and was connected to the local network. The people working there reminded me of the academic youth of the 1960s and 70s — back then they were called “physicist-poets,” a term derived from a famous poem by Boris Slutsky. They are completely open, not wary of strangers, and explain everything with enthusiasm, humor, and passion.
During my first days there, I was shown both underground and surface laboratories. In each case, I was accompanied by a scientist representing the lab, explaining and demonstrating their work. Although the collider was undergoing maintenance, the constant presence of radiation-measuring devices was somewhat unsettling.
Everything happening there is, of course, incredibly fascinating, and after a couple of days I began to understand, at least in part, what they are searching forwhat the Big Bang is, what antiparticles are, and what string theory involves. In connection with the latter, the large sculpture of Shiva Nataraja in the center of CERN’s grounds looks rather curious. Christoph told me it was a gift from Indian nuclear scientists, and Russian researchers working at CERN jokingly call it “Shiva with a balalaika.” As far as I know, this dancing Shiva symbolizes not only creation but also destruction, which feels somewhat ominous, considering what they are doing there.
Remarkable people work there, mostly physicists, of course, from all over the world. They are trying to understand where we and our galaxy come from. Their community is a vivid example of Plato’s dialogue on the state.
A telling story for me involved two staff members sitting at a table next to us in the local café. In the evenings, it becomes not just a place for dinner but also for leisure — people play chess, table tennis, and more. These two were playing backgammon, sharing a sandwich cut in half, and pouring cola from the same large bottle into their glasses. As the physicist accompanying me explained, one of them was from Israel and the other from Palestine. Isn’t that remarkable?
The vast collider complex somewhat resembles American university campuses — a fully self-contained infrastructure with everything needed for living and working.
My first concert took place 100 meters underground, in the CMS laboratory, what they call a detector. It is one of four caverns along the enormous ring that runs beneath Switzerland and France. And, remarkably, I was the first musician ever to perform in the CMS throughout its history. They had hosted many guest artists, of course, but where I performed my solo, I was the first.
Since this is an active work zone, the very heart of the collider, I was required for safety reasons to wear a protective helmet like all staff and visitors. But when I began rehearsing, I realized it was impossible to perform in it: whenever I leaned forward, the helmet slipped down over my eyes. I asked if they had anything else that would still comply with safety regulations but be more practical. They said they had baseball caps — three colors to choose from. I chose blue.
The cap turned out to be quite stylish and far more comfortable than the helmet, but suspiciously heavy, I could feel plates sewn inside it. When I asked where they used these caps, Christoph said they were worn when cleaning the collider channels where the protons travel. I understood everything was safe, of course, but jokingly asked for three dosimeters to measure radiation levels. It turned out the levels were zero, so we continued rehearsing.
One of the conditions of my invitation was that I incorporate something directly connected to the collider into my work. Before arriving, I had no idea how that might be possible or what I could use in my sonic palette. But the first time I descended with Christoph Schäfer in a special elevator into the CMS, I heard a barely audible, almost physical, sound of millions of wires and electronic systems.
At first, this made me uneasy, because although I am a drummer, I like to play very quietly, and I prefer silence between sounds. But I quickly realized that this sound was neither disturbing nor intrusive. It carried no negative energy. In the end, it became the perfect sonic background, or rather, the sound of the collider itself became an integral part of my solo performance.
Another important aspect of this concert: for some reason, the local physicists thought the acoustics there were poor, so they placed sound-reflecting panels around my instruments. When we went down, I saw that the collider had been opened up over a distance of about 15–20 meters, and on the right and left, suspended vertically in the air, were two enormous 15-meter discs made of some special alloy. Exactly in the middle, slightly forward, was the stage they had built for my instruments.
I asked them to remove the acoustic panels and move the stage a bit deeper, toward the center between those discs. This created perfect acoustics for my percussion. On top of that, there were 100 meters of open space above my head, so the acoustics reminded me of my concerts in St. Casimir’s Church in Vilnius. It felt great to play, despite the fact that, as someone joked, it was Friday the 13th, and we were 100 meters underground. “Wow,” said my friend Larry when I called him after the concert and told him about it.
The next day, Saturday, September 14, the open days began — an event they organize once every few years, when the collider is shut down for maintenance. Visitor registration had opened six months in advance, and over two days CERN was visited by 75,000 people. That shows just how much interest there is among residents of Switzerland, France, and other countries in what they do.
Food and drink tents were set up all over the grounds. The air was filled with the pungent smell of bratwurst sandwiches. The CERN staff, physicists and engineers I had befriended during my stay, told me that these days are a nightmare for them, as they are pulled away from their main work and required to manage and assist this massive flow of visitors.
From the morning, events for visitors took place in the central auditorium: lectures, concerts, films about the history of the collider and its Nobel Prize laureates. Together with the well-known British physicist John Ellis, who has worked at CERN since the 1970s and commands great respect, we took part in a public discussion about possible intersections between physics and music.
It turned out there are quite a few such intersections, especially with jazz, as it became clear, in these laboratories and within that massive ring, they too improvise in a certain sense. John has a wonderful sense of humor, and of course we spoke about Albert Einstein and others who experimented with sound. We even came to the conclusion that engaging in music helps scientists concentrate better on their work, particularly in the very moment of playing. By the way, John mentioned that even 27 kilometers is no longer enough for their experiments — they are already planning to build a 100-kilometer ring in the near future.
During these Open Days, all roads leading to CERN were blocked by the police at quite a distance. Special buses transported visitors from that perimeter to the collider grounds, and only those who had registered in advance online and received a pass were allowed through. In this case, it would be more accurate to call it clearance.
Somewhere beyond that police “barrier,” a fairly large group of demonstrators could be seen with banners, protesting against CERN’s activities, fearing that experiments with the Big Bang might somehow recreate it in reality. It inevitably brought to mind the image of the dancing Shiva.
Later, in that same auditorium, I performed another solo concert, this time for the visitors. I was the final act in Saturday’s cultural program, and those staff members who had finished their duties with visitors came to listen. After the concert, once all the visitors had left, we went to the café for dinner. I could see how tired they were, yet they were in great spirits, pleased to have had the opportunity to show so many people what they do.
The next morning, Sunday, Andrius Krivas picked me up. Thanks to diplomatic license plates, he was able to drive directly to one of the gates near my hotel. Since my flight to Vilnius was later that evening, Andrius and his wife Rūta took me on a wonderful trip to Montreux, a town famous for hosting one of Europe’s largest jazz festivals. We enjoyed a walk along the beautiful promenade by Lake Geneva and, of course, visited the Freddie Mercury museum — he spent his later years there and recorded music in that town.
I greatly enjoyed spending time with Andrius and his wife Rūta. Through Andrius Krivas, I could see how our diplomatic corps is changing, bringing together not only professional diplomats, but also people deeply connected to culture.
In October 2019, Vladimir Chekasin and I once again flew to China — to the city of Shenzhen. It is about a thirty-minute drive from Hong Kong. Once a small fishing village that became a city only in 1979, today, together with its surrounding area, it has a population of nearly 20 million.
It is an ultra-modern city, with contemporary museums, galleries, concert venues, and, of course, cutting-edge IT technologies everywhere. As it turns out, most iPhones — for which people line up overnight around the world with each new release — are assembled right here.
Volodya Chekasin and I returned to this city because we had performed there the year before, in 2018, at the OCT-Loft Jazz Festival, probably the best jazz festival in China today, with an outstanding team of curators and organizers. It was quite a remarkable event that we were invited back again for the 2019 festival at the request of the audience. Usually, musicians are invited to return to the same festival only after several years.
And just a week ago, as I am writing these recollections in May 2020, they released a recording of our concert on CD, DVD, and vinyl. The sound quality and design are impeccable, yet another sign of how rapidly China is advancing in every direction.
Another piece of very good news for me: Yuxi Pan, a curator from China and a student of Professor Sarah Wilson at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, won a national competition in China with my video installation Gobustan. One of the conditions of the competition was a solo exhibition in a museum of her choice anywhere in China.
Yuxi Pan flew to Shenzhen, and together we visited two museum spaces, meeting with their directors and local curators. Both museums were brand new, with contemporary architecture and fully equipped. Everything suited me well, and Yuxi then began negotiations with the museum she preferred for a 2020 exhibition.
But… the coronavirus brought its own adjustments, and everything has now been put on hold. It is difficult to say how things will develop further. Still, in any case, it is a great pleasure for me, especially considering how many artists and curators took part in the competition.
Once, sometimes twice a year, I continue to travel to the United States, where since 2006 we have regularly performed with our Jones Jones Trio (Larry Ochs, Mark Dresser, Vladimir Tarasov). In recent years, I have also been playing in a quartet with Jon Raskin, Chris Brown, and Jason Hoopes.
One of our trio concerts took place at the café Zebulon in Los Angeles, which has become very popular in recent years. Zebulon has several performance spaces and hosts not only jazz. After us, there was a very interesting electronic set on the same stage, while in a neighboring hall packed with young people, an excellent rock band was playing.
The next day we drove to San Diego. In this city, unlike much of California, Republicans rather than Democrats are more prevalent. “Thank you for voting for Trump,” read a giant billboard greeting us at the entrance to the city, left over from the election period.
The University of California in San Diego is Mark Dresser’s domain — he has been teaching there for many years after moving from New York. Their music department has an excellent recording studio, and thanks to Mark, we were able to use it. I was fortunate that the head of the percussion department there is Steven Schick, one of the world’s leading performers of contemporary and classical percussion. He allowed me to use anything I needed for the recording, including several very rare instruments from their remarkable percussion collection.
While playing in my isolated recording space, I noticed through the headphones that the sound of Mark Dresser’s double bass kept changing from piece to piece. Only when I stepped out during a break did I see that he had brought several different instruments. San Diego is his home, and he had brought them to diversify the sound of our trio. On tour, it’s difficult to travel with multiple double basses. It’s the same for me when I record or perform in Vilnius, I can use any set of instruments, cymbals, gongs, and so on from my studio, which is, of course, a great advantage.
Then I flew north to San Francisco for concerts and recording sessions with the quartet. In Los Angeles and San Diego, Mark had driven us around in his van, so I hadn’t really noticed the changes that had taken place in California. But in San Francisco, where I stayed in the center and walked everywhere, I could hardly believe my eyes—how much had changed in just one year.
Since 2018, the sale and use of marijuana have been officially legalized in California. And if you really can’t do without it, you can even grow cannabis on your own balcony — this, too, is permitted by state authorities.
Stepping out for lunch from the concert hall in downtown San Francisco, I felt like I needed a gas mask. The air was thick with the pungent smell of smoldering brushwood—that’s exactly what marijuana smells like. The odor was terrible. It was mixed with the smell of urine and unwashed bodies.
There were an extraordinary number of homeless people all around, living in tents, cardboard boxes, or simply on scraps of fabric right on the streets. It was a real shock to me. I love this city and have been visiting it almost every year since 1986, but I had never seen anything like this before.
In the past, they were at least loaded onto buses and taken somewhere—though by morning they would reappear in the city center. Now, it seems, they live there around the clock.
With the quartet, we performed concerts in San Francisco and Sacramento and were also invited to record in a studio in Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Oakland and neighboring Berkeley have remained, since the 1960s, an “enclave” of contemporary art, including rock, jazz, and much more. The San Francisco Symphony is based there, along with theaters, jazz venues, well-known rock musicians, and rappers.
Marijuana has always been in use there, regardless of government decisions. There are, of course, fewer homeless people than in downtown San Francisco, with its concentration of shops and restaurants.
Mills College is also located there, where Luciano Berio studied and where Iannis Xenakis, Terry Riley, Anthony Braxton, and many others have taught. In my opinion, it is one of the best places to study contemporary music and jazz.
The Quartet
The idea of bringing our quartet together belonged to saxophonist Jon Raskin, a long-time collaborator of Larry Ochs in the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. Since the mid-1990s, I have often played with Jon in various lineups. Alongside Jon and myself, the quartet includes Jason Hoopes on bass guitar and Chris Brown, who has been a professor at Mills College for over thirty years — a composer, pianist, and… electronics.
Chris builds, programs, and samples his own electronic instruments. I have always been somewhat skeptical about live electronics: there is usually a delay between pressing a button and producing sound, while music does not wait—it is already moving forward. But Chris Brown has complete control over his electronics, seamlessly blending their sound with the acoustic piano. This was a first in my experience.
The same goes for Jason. I had never been a great admirer of the bass guitar, especially having been spoiled by many years of playing with Mark Dresser and the rich, full sound of his double bass. But Jason Hoopes’ bass guitar proved to be a completely different instrument, he handles it in a very distinctive way, integrating organically into the quartet’s music. It became clear how right Jon Raskin was to bring us together in exactly this configuration.
You can really hear the result when listening to the recorded material. This is where the difference between live performance, or so-called live recording, and studio recording becomes apparent. And it’s not just that studio recordings generally offer higher sound quality. There are subtler aspects that musicians rarely speak about.
When you perform a concert, there is a kind of energy exchange with the audience. This energy arises within you and is transmitted into the hall. You feel the response from the listeners, and it stimulates you. In the studio, however, you are alone with yourself, hearing your partners through headphones, down to the smallest nuances and details. In that situation, your energy turns inward, and that “chemistry” I mentioned earlier takes place. You have to align, often intuitively, what you hear in your headphones with your inner experience of the musical text. In a sense, it is a kind of Zen. But this only works when there is the right combination of partners.
This subject still largely belongs to philosophers, when speaking about the structure of invisible spiritual worlds and their intersections—something Merab Mamardashvili wrote about. As far as I know, he loved jazz. And jazz is perhaps the clearest example of what we might call “something”—something we feel but cannot fully describe or illustrate, yet can convey through our instruments.
The recording studio in Oakland was a special, large facility consisting of several spaces, equipped with the most modern technology and instruments. We recorded in one of the chamber ensemble studios. The sound engineer reminded me of our Arūnas Zujus from MAMAstudios in Vilnius, just as meticulous and persistent in positioning microphones to achieve the best possible sound from our instruments.
The doors from all the studios opened into a foyer with an impressive spread of food and drinks, where we could relax and have a snack during breaks. During the first break, we couldn’t figure out how to open the refrigerator until a staff member showed us that you simply had to say “Open” when standing in front of it—high technology, a reflection of the nearby Silicon Valley just south of the Bay. California…
During one of the breaks, a group of young African American rappers came out of a neighboring studio. Well-groomed, dressed as if straight from glossy magazine covers, they said, “Wow! Guys, you’re playing some really interesting music.” We realized they had gone into the control room during our session and listened to what we were doing. They asked us—at length and quite professionally—about form, how we structure compositions, and how we coordinate with one another.
Finally, as we were saying goodbye, one of them offered us some marijuana. We politely thanked them and declined. After they returned to their studio, Jon said, “Well, if a rapper offered us weed, then they’ve definitely accepted us.”
I should also tell you about the art collection I have assembled. It so happened that most of my friends are artists, and it is their gifts that formed this collection. I have donated the greater part of it to the Lithuanian National Museum of Art. You can see it at any convenient time in the museum’s halls at the Radvila Palace (Radvilų).
Why I had not written or spoken about this before will become clear from the text I wrote for the catalogue, which, with the museum’s kind permission, I am including here.
The beginning of my collection dates back to the 1960s. I’m not even sure it should be called a collection, perhaps “an assemblage” would be more accurate. I know every one of these artists personally; almost all of them are my close friends. I spent most of my free time between concerts in their studios. Thanks to friendships based on creative exchange and shared interests in music, art, and literature, we gladly gave each other the best we had.
In my apartment in Vilnius, there was no free space — everything was covered with paintings that, at the time, could not be seen on the walls of Soviet museums. My friends called it the “Museum of Friends.”
Many of them, living in other cities, often stayed with me in Vilnius. We showed their paintings and graphic works and read poetry in the studios of Algis Kuras, Algis Švėgžda, Eugenijus Cukermanas, Valentinas Antanavičius, and others. Our small creative community in Vilnius would gather at these meetings.
In 1984, together with Laimė Lukošiūnienė, who worked at the Republican Library of Lithuania and regularly organized wonderful exhibitions in its large foyer, we attempted to organize an exhibition of works by Ilya Kabakov and Erik Bulatov. When the authorities learned about it, the exhibition was immediately banned.
In 1988, already during the wave of perestroika and on the eve of our independence, we organized an exhibition of works from my collection at the Art Exhibition Hall in Vilnius. Later, in 1992, we held another exhibition — of albums and drawings by Ilya Kabakov. The architect of both exhibitions was Eugenijus Antanas Cukermanas, and the texts were written by Alfonsas Andriuškevičius. I am deeply grateful to them for this.
During the second exhibition, in the early and dangerous 1990s, a group of men approached me in the exhibition café and предложили мне продать пару работ Кабакова. Judging by their appearance, I understood that if I refused, they might find another way to obtain them. I managed as best I could, explaining that the works did not belong to me but to the artist, and that my name, since I lived in Vilnius, served merely as a cover to allow them to be shown. It became clear to me that keeping them simply on the wall was unsafe for me and my family. So when I moved, I hung almost nothing, keeping only a few works on display. The rest of the collection I stored away.
And now, nearly thirty years later, when I looked into my “storage,” I discovered a remarkable, museum-quality collection of artists from Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, and other countries where I had performed. I carefully reviewed everything—my entire archive of artworks, samizdat publications, and photographs, and realized that this is already history, a vivid imprint of the second half of the 20th century.
All of these works were given to me, sincerely and with love. I am happy to have been friends with these people. I love to play, and I have always enjoyed performing for them — they are my most demanding listeners. Often I gave improvised concerts in artists’ studios, using whatever was at hand: pots in Ilya Kabakov’s studio in Moscow, or a wooden box (which, incidentally, sounded quite good) in Algis Kuras’s studio in Vilnius. We also created joint performances, as in the case of Dmitry Prigov and Ilya Kabakov. With Ilya, beyond performances and a production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, we carried out numerous collaborative projects in different countries.
For more than thirty years, we were like one family. Some are no longer with us, others have changed profoundly, as new times bring new rules. Though we meet less and less often, we still feel a deep warmth toward one another.
In a way, I envy the visitor: I lived alongside these works for many years, while you are seeing this constellation of remarkable artworks for the first time.
And of course, everything had to align. The arrival of Arūnas Gelūnas as director of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, who from our very first meeting impressed and delighted me with his understanding of the context and artistic value of this collection. The support of Ignas Staskevičius, who was ready to build a separate space for it so that everyone could see it. And Viktoras Butkus, who предложил музей МО для показа коллекции. My thanks to everyone—especially to the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, its director Arūnas Gelūnas, and all the staff who helped transfer the collection and took it under their care.
I am waiting for flights to resume so that I can return to Vilnius. I feel good and calm in Kyiv, but I haven’t played a single concert for four months… A strange feeling. Never, since the moment I first picked up drumsticks, have I had such a long break from performing.
Fortunately, some of the concerts were not canceled but postponed until autumn or the following year. I miss my instruments terribly. I realize that when this door of self-isolation finally opens, I will step into a completely different world. Who could have imagined, not so long ago, that such a tiny virus would bring the entire world to its knees?
Everything will change, of course, but nothing connected with Culture will truly change. On the contrary, I believe interest in it will only grow, as it is the only refuge for each of us. For some it is literature, for others music, for others visual art, theater, cinema, and more. The world of the Arts is an immense galaxy, and jazz firmly holds its place within it.
Kyiv, June 25, 2020
Opening the manuscript of Vladimir Tarasov’s latest book, sent to me from the other side of the world (not from the one that has long been looming over the planet, but simply from the other hemisphere), I became so absorbed in reading that I was quite surprised when my eyes reached the final period: only two or three hours had passed, yet the pages I devoured in one breath carried me back more than half a century, as if I had stepped into an old Moskvich car converted into a time machine…
I fell in love with jazz, as they say, from the very first sound — during the war, in 1944. We were boys, a slightly streetwise gang from Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya Street, which even then I refused to call by its official avenue name—and we snuck into the Green Theater for the first Moscow concert of Eddie Rosner’s jazz orchestra.
That evening, I was simply overwhelmed, by the great trumpeter, by the brilliant soloists, the singers, by the entire festive atmosphere under the open sky (which, incidentally, was also used for victory fireworks).
I say this seriously: I was literally stunned by the rhythms and the sound of the music, which lifted my whole being above the sad and truly difficult reality of wartime life.
Since then, I cannot imagine my life without the sound of jazz. It is my first love, while classical music, also dear to me, is my second.
And now the book carries me into another time… The years of my exile — three-quarters forced, one-quarter voluntary have passed. I am in London, at a reception in honor of the performances of a renowned trio… Friends introduce me to Vladimir Tarasov, Ganelin, and Chekasin — brilliant jazz musicians and, in a way, fortunate ones, of whom there were very few in the musical world of a country that, unlike others, lived according to the rules of party bosses.
I had a bottle of whisky with me — we drank it in honor of the meeting, right in front of Soviet diplomats and somewhat embarrassed ladies and gentlemen… We chatted freely about everything, including my books, which had already been circulating behind the “Iron Curtain”… I told them how, after running away from school, I worked like a mule in a warehouse of “Soyuzkishproduct,” where I soaked huge bull bladders in brine, they were later used for drums in African liberation movements… I confidently declared that my meeting in London with Tarasov — one of the best percussionists on the planet—was no coincidence: you see, I said, many things in the world are interconnected, even if it’s not immediately obvious…
I think that this magnificent Trio was one of the first swallows heralding the inevitable arrival of political spring, something the officials responsible for sending musicians abroad probably understood better than the fortunate ones who were allowed to travel.
Blurring time, the book carried me back to the late 1940s, when even the word “jazz” was forbidden, not to mention its rhythms and sounds, despite the fact that Russia at the time had no shortage of brilliant musicians, virtuosos on any instrument.
I remembered the now long-forgotten crusade, supposedly nationwide, declared by the “collective mind, honor, and conscience of our era” against jazz itself and against jazz musicians, who were hastily rebranded as “Soviet variety performers”, as if equated with products renamed for ideological reasons: cigarettes “Nord” became “Sever,” and French rolls became simply “city bread.”
I recalled how this crusade forced courageous musicians to play in basements, attics, out in the open air — thereby awakening in millions of young people a conscious passion for the forbidden fruit: jazz.
But I will not retell the twists and turns of Vladimir Tarasov’s life among musicians, his artistic pursuits, and constant travels. I will only say that everything I have read is far from indifferent to me. In the genre of memoir essays, the author is entirely at home and writes the way he plays the drums, composes music, and creates installations, excellently, in my view, and with genuine interest. Most importantly, he writes with knowledge and with respect for the reader, otherwise I would not have been so absorbed that I read long past midnight.
Yuz Aleshkovsky
Last updated on 24.03.2026
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