SLAMCD 277 CD TITLE ‘Songs from the Black Earth’ by Steve Kershaw.
Nick Vintskevitch: Soprano saxophone (tracks 1, 2, 3, 5 & 6) and alto saxophone (tracks 4, 7 & 8)
Leonid Vintskevitch: Piano
Steve Kershaw: Double Bass (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 & 8)
Petter Svärd: Drums (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 & 7)
TRACK LISTING:
1. Alone: 8:08
2. Jacqueline du Pré: 4:13
3. Song From the Black Earth: 6:29
4. When the Saints Go Marching In: 5:30
5. Village Music: 8:17
6. Holywell Street: 3:33
7. Pep’s Home: 7:06
8. Untitled Encore: 4:13
All tracks composed by Nick Vintskevitch except Village Music (Leonid Vintskevitch) and When the Saints Go Marching In (Traditional)
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 & 7 recorded at the Jacqueline du Pré MusicBuilding, Oxford on 5th July 2005.
Engineered, mixed & mastered by Gerry O’ Riordan at Spatial Audio, Pinewood Film Studios, England.
Track 8 recorded live at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, Oxford on 25th June 2006.
Engineered, mixed & mastered by Eric Smith at BullpenStudio, Oxfordshire, England.
Track 5 recorded live at the Holywell Music Room, Oxford on 2nd December 2007.
Engineered, mixed & mastered by Eric Smith at BullpenStudio, Oxfordshire, England.
This Anglo-Russo-Swedish quartet first met in Finland in 2000, jammed,
gelled, formed a band, then recorded this album of European jazz/ethnic
music in three sessions (two of them live) in Oxford between 2005 and
2007. The title comes from an Osip Mandelstam poem, and their chief
inspiration from the same source as Mandelstam's: Russia's fertile and
beautiful black earth region, centred on Voronezh. Saxophonist Nick
Vintskevitch wrote most of the material, quiet, folk-inflected, elegant
music thoughtfully addressed by a tastefully restrained band that probably
prides itself more on purity of tone than on jazz-based propulsiveness,
emphasising the beauty and shape of the pieces' affecting melodies rather
than their various rhythmic possibilities. This is not to say that there
are no passages of robust intensity or even fierce interplay in
compositions such as the plangent opener 'Alone', or the quartet's
intriguing visit to the traditional New Orleans staple 'When the Saints Go
Marching In', just that to considerable effect the band's
priorities lie elsewhere, the Vintskevitches (Nick the flawless
saxophonist, Leonid the versatile pianist), UK bassist Steve Kershaw and
Swedish drummer Petter Svärd concentrating, above all else, on sheer
sonic seductiveness.
Chris Parker, The Vortex. April 09
Songs From the Black Earth literally takes you away from the very beginning, with its lyricism of extraordinary beauty and equally extraordinary diversity, as well as its unhurried subtlety made up of nuances of an almost technical nature. Vasily Zhukovsky, the great Russian poet, has a very interesting poem (or rather, an elegy) called The Sea, which the poet ends by addressing a seemingly wild sea:
Deceitful is your unmoving appearance:
For there is a storm hidden in the abyss of your calmness.
And while you admire the beauty of the sky, you shiver for it.
These words may well sum up the general mood of Songs from the Black Earth: the calmness is just the surface, through which at times the true passion breaks through.
In the very first piece (the author is mostly Vintskevitch Junior), Alone, at the very end of the first solo (with Nikolai playing the soprano sax) one can hear the stubbornly recurring, almost folksong tune, typical for a Russian zhaleyka, although the piece was composed in the state of Idaho: " Limitless space ... Monotonous roads... Always snowing ... This was so like our Motherland... Solitude ..." says the author.
The second piece seems to belong to another world. It is called Jacqueline du Pr. A concert hall in Oxford where the Vintskevitches performed was given the name of this great English cellist with an aristocratic French name. However, that is a lyrical note with a bit of sadness in it. Which is no wonder. A student of Rostropovich (whom he talked out of taking part in the Tchaikovsky competition), she died at the age of 42, having spent 14 years of her life in an invalid chair with an incurable disease -multiple sclerosis, and in a rather complicated family situation (she was supposed to be married to an outstanding pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim).
The titular Song from the Black Earth is an ascetic ballad telling us what is common about the earth of Kursk and England. Or maybe Scandinavia too: not only the soil of course, but what is known as the Nordic spirit. Especially since Vintskevitch Junior has long left the southern Kursk and now resides in the capital of Russia, where wild bears are still to be met in the snow-covered streets, according to the gossip still circulating in the West. As a matter of fact, musicians like the Vintskevitches, with their international ties and the " Jazz Province" Festival, have made the people abroad realise that these are the myths. However, is art ever possible without myths?
In the 50s, for instance, we danced rock 'n' roll to the Afro-American spiritual When the Saints go Marching In. Lembit Saarsalu, an old-time partner of Leonid Vintskevitch, reminded us of that fact, having played this hymn in a cheerful Afro-American funky style for his 2 x 2 = Labayalg record. The quartet made up of two Russians, an Englishman and a Swede also goes back to what is kept in the genetic memory of Jazz - dance as a spiritual form of art (as a theologian from the Netherlands once wrote, " after all, marches is a dance, too"). Please note the reserved manner (even compare to the Estonians, let alone the African-Americans) in which Petter Svärd accompanies the alto sax of Nikolai Vintskevitch.
Village Music is a very avant-garde, so to say, that is between Errol Garner and Cecil Taylor. [Down Beat, the oldest but still rather influential jazz magazine, described the duo of Leonid Vintskevitch and Lembit Saarsalu (Estonia) as the ‘beautiful Russian open-ended avant-garde where Errol Garner does not conflict with Cecil Taylor’]. Without quoting any Russian folk songs, Leonid Vintskevitch "prepares" the grand piano in such a way that went the keys are pressed, the strings produce something like the faraway strumming sound of an almost forgotten balalaika or domra, and this strumming, just like the Zhukovsky's sea, is hiding a truly boisterous life under the surface - and nonconventional but still piano-based boogie-woogie. "It is the sources of this music, the true folklore that so fascinated Igor Stravinsky during his ‘Russian’ years", explains the pianist Vintskevitch. Which is true: not that far away from the Kursk region is the little town of Ustilug (now lying in on the Ukrainian-Polish border), where the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky spent every summer as a teenager, and where he absorbed, both literally and figuratively speaking, the atmosphere of the Slavonic musical folklore.
While it was Prokofiev, that Vintskevitch Senior played in the final exam at the Kazan Conservatory, the paradoxical Stravinsky is initially much closer to him. In a word, it’s the traditions … The sixth track is Holywell Street. It is the name of the street in Oxford, where one of the oldest English concert halls is to be found, the one that has seen Haydn and Handel. "The desire to be in this hall and perform there is unparalleled ..." No comment.
Pep's Home is a dedication to Pep Peters from Salt Lake City, a friend of the Vintskevitches. "This is a home that has its own studio and, what's most important, an excellent collection of jazz records and books." Perhaps that is why this is the only number which every fan of jazz mainstream and even blues accepts as his or her own.
And last but not least comes Untitled Encore - composed in Moscow, but first played in Oxford, in the hall named after Jacqueline du Pre, and played encore it was ...
Indeed, jazz has long become the same type of an international art as the cello concertos of the British musician du Pre or the quartet of the father and son Vintskevitch, Steve Kershaw of England, and Petter Svärd of Sweden.
Dmitry Ukhov, АВТОЗВУК Magazine (Russia) #03’2008
SONGS FROM THE BLACK EARTH
Leonid Vintskevitch, graduated as a concert pianist from the Kazan Academy of Music, and despite being honoured as ‘Solo Pianist of the Year’ several times in the old Soviet Union, became interested in studying new, avant-garde jazz, although his style during performance is also rooted in the folklore of his central Russian home. His duo with Estonian saxophonist Lembit Saarsalu was the first from ex-USSR to play in the Lionel Hampton/Chevron Jazz Festival in the USA, and nowadays, thanks to performances with the likes of Elvin Jones, Lionel Hampton and Kevin Mahogany, Leonid's name is well known to jazz audiences in many countries. He has played at jazz festivals in Prague, Leipzig, Berlin, the USA, the Baltic states, and at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland.
Leonid’s brilliant technique and creativity, his remarkable explosive style, daring, impudent outlook and emotional depth have been highly praised by public and critics alike:
A beautiful Russian open-ended avant-garde where Errol Garner does not conflict with Cecil Taylor (Down Beat)
His son, saxophonist Nikolay Vintskevitch, carries the torch for the future of Russian jazz, having appeared with Kenny Barron, Claudio Roditi and as a featured soloist with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra.
In the year 2000 Nikolay and Leonid found themselves jamming together at a Jazz Festival in Finland with the award-winning Anglo-Scandinavian trio ‘Stekpanna’. Teaming up with Stekpanna, they made their first visit to England as part of Oxford Contemporary Music’s groundbreaking Russian Music: Past, Present and Future series. The last year or so has seen them headlining the Hermitage Jazz Festival in Moscow, performing in London’s Purcell Room, and most recently securing a slot at the Krapivna Festival at Yasnaya Polyana, at the personal invitation of Count Vladimir Tolstoy, the great-great grandson of the mighty author Leo Tolstoy.
Their new CD, in collaboration with Stekpanna’s rhythm section of Steve Kershaw and Petter Svärd is entitled Songs from the Black Earth. It was recorded in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building and at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, and has just shifted 50 000 copies in Russia. The group recently featured on the front cover of Russia’s premier jazz magazine Jazz.ru, and the CD will be officially released on the SLAM label in February 2009.
The recording takes its inspiration from a unique combination of jazz, folk and classical musical influences, but at the heart of the feeling of the CD and the live performances is Russia’s famed black earth, the chernozem, ‘more valuable than oil, more precious than gold.’