The organizers of the Musical Hermitage elite international festival, about to kick off at the famous St. Petersburg museum this Saturday and to last until the 28
th, have decided to lend an informal tinge to the event and invite the Modern Trio jazz performers.
The "Trio" jazzmen were taken aback on hearing the news, but the organizers assured them that their performance would stir the audience's interest, the more so since Modern Trio performs an avant-garde, rather than classical jazz music.
To make sure, one is welcome to listen to Modern Trio's latest album "In Search of Standard". Seasoned jazz performers and jazz music lovers in the United States, the birthplace of jazz, were so impressed by the album that they named it the best one of 2009 in the authoritative New York-based magazine "All About Jazz". Meanwhile Modern Trio has so far failed to present the album to audiences in St. Petersburg. The Musical Hermitage festival will thus premiere the "In Search of Standard".
The Modern Trio trumpet player Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky said this in an interview with the Voice of Russia about the paradoxical title of the album, In Search of Standard., (with "standard" implying a jazz theme).
Many would wonder, why anyone should search for a standard, since the very notion of a standard implies that it has already been set, Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky says. The point is this is a sort of ironic trick. Jazz technique is normally implemented in the "idea" that begins with and ends in presenting the theme. While the middle part of a composition is for a musician to display their improvisation talent, which is normally not correlated with the theme as such. Now, we, in Modern Trio, sought to use improvisations to extend what's normally contained in the standard proper, and create some sort of a light and at times mocking aura.
During the Musical Hermitage festival the jazzmen will certainly fail to carefully reproduce their CD recordings, since perfect imitations run counter to the very nature of jazz music. But it would prove curious, including to the jazzmen, to watch the birth of a creative compromise, as Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky put it, namely a live performance of the recorded version.
Whenever a musician plays what they like, Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky says, they are doing what they are intrigued by at a given moment. So when we, in our trio, start feeling the same about music-making, we enjoy the whole thing.
And last but not least, the Trio members are clearly people of talent, - the double bass player Andrei Kondakov, pianist Vladimir Volkov and trumpet player Vyachelsav Gaivoronsky. They are both bright performers, authors of their own music projects, and composers who are quite successful in writing music for the theatre and movies.
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