23 September 2007

23 September 2007
Mark Twain
United States of America

Dear Mark,
I apologize for the few days between letters. The last few days have been very busy with preparing for my first week of Festival performances, which begins on Monday. The preparation is going well, and I finally have all of the new works that I will play this week-the one's for the next group of concerts in October is a different story, including a new work of mine which I have not begun yet, but we will worry about that NEXT week.

As far as performances, we were treated to a performance last evening by the Catherine the Great Chamber Ensemble, which was performing at the big annual Early Music Festival here in St. Petersburg. Even though I am a very open-minded artist, I have to admit that the idea of going to an early music festival had about as much appeal as being covered in breadcrums at an aviary...granted, this had to do with visions of Renaissance Faires and people dressed in foofy outfits, waxing poetically in Olde English and playing nose flutes...badly. I actually realized that I had never really been to an early music performance, which is odd since I lived for years in Boston which is the Early Music capital of the US. So, I went smiling and openminded...well, openminded, anyways...well, somewhat openminded...

The concert was at the Mali Zal, or "Little Theater"-a beautiful hall, just gorgeous. The program consisted of the Bach family-J.S. and the boys, which I found strange for a supposed "Early Music" concert-no viols or recorders. The first performance was J.S's Sonata in B minor for violin and keyboard. The harpsichordist, who shall remain nameless was terrible-square and messy; unfortunately, they gave the oaf a solo piece later on which he butchered-strangely, a second solo keyboard piece on the program failed to occur...

But, the violinist, a cat named Andre Reshetin...whoa...could he SWING! From the first phrase I was hooked. I was tapping my foot and had to refrain from yelling "yeah, man, yeah", but I did bob my head rather violently (Margaret seemed horrified at this)-I felt like I was seeing Bird live-the chops, the phrasing, the SOUL; What an impact!

Good music, real music, and I don't care the genre or time period, swings. This is what so many players, students AND professionals, don't get. This lack of swing is evident in many classical players and ensembles that I encounter-classical music MUST swing-not like pre-WWII dance band swing, but it falls into a groove that is in sync with the rhythm of your soul-you feel it, you know it-it MOVES you. This is not just a problem with classical cats; I work with many jazzers as well who think they can swing (shu-fle off-to Buff-al oh), but not SWING. Rock musicians are notoriously ignorant to it; todays rock musicians, that is.

So this is swing-if you want to hear swing, listen to the Vienna Philharmonic play Mozart-THAT is swing; listen to Count Basie's original band or Art Tatum playing the piano, THAT is Swing; Otis Reading-that's Swing! Musicians have lost this, and it has sterilized the art of performance.
The coming week bring my first festival performances here in St. Petersburg and in Moscow. I can only aspire to Swing.

Yours ever faithful,
Demetrius