viewpoint-east.org

Ilya Stupel som ny chefsdirigent i Lviv

Category: by sophie engström, music, ukraina
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(Läsningstid: < 1 minut)

Den svenske dirigenten Ilya Stupel (som jag skrivit om tidigare) har blivit ny chefsdirigent för Lvivs filarmoniska orkester.  Det är ju mycket glädjande nyheter för oss som hoppas på fler kontaktytor mellan svensk och ukrainsk konstmusik.


Hycz Orkestr

Category: by sophie engström, music, ukraina
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(Läsningstid: < 1 minut)

Ukrainsk musik hur låter det? undrar ni kanske. Kanske tror ni att det är endast produceras kletig eurodisco här. Eller så tror tror ni att detta är hårdrockens Mekka. Kanske hör ni för ert inre gälla kvinnoröster i ett ukrainsk folkmusik-sammelsurium. OK, inga av dessa alternativ är helt fel, men det finns också mycket annat örongodis. Därför vill jag vill jag göra er uppmärksam på Hycz Orkestr, eller ГИЧ оркестр, från L’viv. Ni ska helt enkelt inte missa detta guldkorn. Lyssna på deras album på bandcamp. Tillåt er att hänföras!


Yuriy Zmorovych: “An avantgardist should always be in opposition to the norm”

Category: art, avantgarde, by sophie engström, music, theatre, ukraine
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(Läsningstid: 5 minuter)

Read the Swedish version here.

What is avantgarde? I ask myself while sitting with avant-garde sculptor, musician, poet and theatre man Yuriy Zmorovych in his chaotic but very cozy studio in central Kyiv. Books, sculptures, self-made instruments, videotapes, DVDs and vinyl records are stacked in a very wayward regime only known by Yuriy. How should I manage to explain the greatness, humor and the presence of this man’s work, by just using some few words? I ask myself further. For many the term avant-garde have elitistic, pretentious and even obsolete conjections. But Yuriy Zmorovychs avantgarde do not fit into this description. His avantgarde expression is playful, intelligence which feels current and contemporary, without being pretentious. It must be the humor that is key to, I think, for Yuriy has no problem laughing captivating when he talks about his own creations and ideas.

ЮРИЙ ЗМОРОВИЧ / YURIY ZMOROVYCH

ЮРИЙ ЗМОРОВИЧ / YURIY ZMOROVYCH

Yuriy Zmorovych has a great production. He began his career as an improviser in early 1970s. And in the early 1980s, he met the Russian musician and avantgardist Sergei Letov. This meeting has led to several collaborations, but in the beginning it was actually mainly film-making and Yuriy made two films together with Letov, improvised on the theme of creation.

In the 1990s he started to work with international artists and one of the more memorable was when he worked with the French group improvisation ARFI. (ARFI stands for Association à la recherche d’un Folklore imaginaire.) In a few weeks in August 1991 they played on a river boat that went from Kiev to Odessa. Between their improvisations, they all sat like glued in front of the radio and listened to the reports on events from Moscow. It was the time when the Soviet Union fell apart.

In constant opposition
For Yuriy, this was symbolic. He went on his river boat and broke new ground, or traveling in new waters, with avantgarde musicians who had similar views on the creation of his own. And in then same time Soviet Union came to an end. For him, avantgarde must constantly stands in opposition to the norm, fighting oppression and those who exercise power.

It was never easy to be improvisational in the Soviet Union, he says, adding that it is of course much easier for young people today to choose that path. Jazz was, for example, prohibited, and he tells emphatically how he, after several years of searching, found “A Drum Is a Woman” by Duke Ellington on a black market in Odessa.

– Duke Ellington had a great spontaneity and it has always been fruitful for my own creativity. But since I came into improvised jazz and avant-garde, I must admit that I abandoned him to others. Along with the Dadaism and Malevich, Ellington are my icons, Yuriy implies.

Yuriy would not want to notify other sources of inspiration, and responds that it could be anything. The rain, a cat jamar, no talking, cars driving along the street, or an internal flow.

The key to the avantgarde expression, according to Yuriy to listen to the spontaneous creative process, to dare to open the doors to the inner voice and not be afraid of what you hear, and the second cornerstone of the avantgarde expression is that always stand in opposition against the norm. This expression is found in the inner voice if you just listen, he says.

His untuned piano was a great beginning
Already in the beginning, in 1970s, his drive was to create a kind of noise generator or stream from the innermost of the soul and the body. He says that he therefor began to play on an untuned piano. An excellent choice, Yuriy implies.

– In my ears it sounded accurate, of course, he laughs.

YURIY ZMOROVYCH

YURIY ZMOROVYCH

By then he started to build his own instruments. The material was everything he found around him. Metal, plastic, cloth, paper, combined with a guitar string can make miracles.

– Like this, he says and picks up an old plastic bottle with a round hole in the middle. Through the plastic bottle, he has strained a guitar string. When he plays on the string, while screws on the cap, it sounds actually strangely surreal.

Avantgarde theater
In the 1990s Yuriy had the opportunity to become the creative leader for avantgarde theater Teatr AA. His partner was Olexandr Nesterov (link in Ukrainian), a legendary avantgarde guitarist and composer who dead in 2005. They worked with both amateur and professional actors. Important for the project was to lead the actors to learn to play instruments, and to act spontaneously, to improvise. This was not always easy, since many were trained actors. To release an already learned knowledge of how acting should be is not easy, says Yuriy.

In Memoriam Nesterov – with Kiritchenko, Коtrа, Zagaykevych, Letov, Makarov, Borisov, Yaremchuk, Tovstukha, Khmelyov, Ohrymchuk, Strelnikov, Klymenko, Zmorovych, Smetanin, Rudyi, Putyatin, Khmelyov, Makhno. NOTE! You hear Zmorovych in the second piece (if ou have any problem hearing it here, go to the website, see the link above) and not on the first, that is Yuriy Yaremchuck performing!

Teatr AAA got much attention, not only in former Soviet Union but also in Western Europe and the USA. But during the crisis years of the 1990s the sponsors fled and the theater had to be closed.

“Avantgarde should never be decorative”
Yuriy loves to to work with amateurs. He argues that the most important thing is to be creative and to be self-taught and that does not necessarily mean that you do not know how to create. He argues that many musicians or artists in avantgarde often are overly decorative in their design and not in opposition to the norm. He points a little at his compatriot Yuriy Jaremchych, he also worked with previously. But they have chosen different ways and is therefore not entirely agree on the avantgarde expression. At the same time Yuriy Zmorovych would never allow condemnation against other artists.

I ask him what he thinks about the future and he urge that he believes that a new generations will bring avantgarde further to new dimensions. The forms will of course be different, but the most incentives will stand.

– The human mind is collective, and our knowledge is shared. New influences will of course be added as our lives are changing. These are doors that the avantgardist should open. But how it will be can only the future reveal, he concludes.

And I am really feel enthusiastic by his optimism.


My small essay concerning improvised music

Category: guests, music
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(Läsningstid: 2 minuter)

I am very proud to present an other guest at viewpoint-east.org. Today you can read an essay by Jury Jaremchuk, composer and instrumentalist from Lviv, Ukraine. He plays tenor-sax, soprano-sax, clarinet, percussion, piano. He works in different genres (free jazz, contemporary music, improvised music), contemporary technique of sax play (multiphone, slap, double staccato).

myspace
wordspress

What is improvised music? It is
Music without different aesthetic idioms,
Music which is sent to different currents and styles,
Music is created here and now, directly on eyes at the audience,
The conditions is that it is music of the organized accidents, as a controllable stream
Creative consciousness, certainly, with very high, musical
Preparation of executors of this music which demands a high level
Imaginations, intuitions, concentration and musical culture, which borders to
Religious rituals, creating a strong power field,
Where experience one or two, are empathized by the whole groups of people.
In this music there is no totalitarianism, it is born directly from
Group inspirations participants of ensemble, and feedback of a sound and idea,
This music a sound koan, or group meditation.
All of us know, that music is a sound, and the sound is the carrier enough
The big information, supervising a sound we structure it in
Composition directly at the moment of game, structure which
We make here and now are intelectual, a product of our mind with mentality and intuition,
As the mirror displays our external and inwardness, that is all
Processes that is demonstration all our essence at present.
Truthfulness of this process, proves to be true unpredictability and
Spontaneity played, is actually important for such music.
As the predominating factor this music is freedom, in
The moment of game, we are released from social stratifications and dogmas,
Coming nearer directly to the primary essence.
And still, music and culture as a whole, are the major factors, allowing to overcome intolerableness of social life.

yaremtchuk


“Cops on Fire” a very new Hip-hopera

Category: art, by sophie engström, music, russia, theatre
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(Läsningstid: 2 minuter)

The hip-hopera “Cops on Fire” have the first night of performance on the 4th of December in S:t Petersburg. The music is written by Alexander Holenko, also known as Sasha Dza or Dzhem, who also is the founder of the label how2make. The director is Yury Kvyatkovsky and the creative producer Sasha Pas.

The creative association Le Cirque de Sharles La Tannes stands for the performance. Some probably remember their interpretation of the Russian author Victor Pelevin’s short story “The crystal world”. You can watch a clip from that performance under the cut.

copsonfire

The press release about “Cop on Fire” tell us is an experimental project and result of creative confluence of theatre culture and contemporary youth music. The creators decided to call the genre of their creation «hip-hopera». Hip-hopera = live hip-hop arias + original decorations + tricks + choreography.

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Ryskt underground utmanar

Category: by sophie engström, music, russia, ryssland
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(Läsningstid: 5 minuter)

Det är dramatiska förändringar som sker på den ryska musikscenen. Vinsten av Eurovison Song Contest förra året är kanske det som många tänker på, men under ytan myllrar det av mycket mer nydanande och kreativa musikprojekt än så. En av de mer tongivande aktörerna är Sasha Dzhem eller Sasha Dza. Han kreerar avantgardistisk hip hop men är också grafittimålare och skivbolaget how2makes grundare. Tillsammans med hans samarbetspartner, den Roma Mujiuce, bildar de cut2kill. Vi träffades för att språka om deras syn på den ryska independent-musiken, dess framtidsutsikter och de egna ambitionerna.

cut2kill
sasha dza + roma mujuice = cut2kill

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Massages from Belarus

Category: belarus, by sophie engström, music
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(Läsningstid: 2 minuter)

The Swedish NGO and civil rights organisation Östgruppen has released an album. The album is a compilation with Belarus artists and it is part of the organisation’s work to highlight article 193 in the Belarus penal.

Among the artists you can find some of the most successful artists on the alternative scene in Belarus. Artists as Krama, Kasia Kamotskaja, Tav.Mauzer are well-known in Belarus and neighbour countries, but few have ever heard any Belarusian music in Sweden. This is, strangely enough, the first compilation of Belarus popular music released in Sweden. According to the chair man at Östgruppen, Martin Uggla, the interest and knowledge about Belarus is very small in Sweden, but he hopes that this compilation will contribute to establish an interest for Belarus issues, music and culture in Sweden.

Listen to sample from the album here.

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