Starostin Sergey Biography

About how the Soviet man was transcoded, and who saved the passing folk culture. About all this - in a big interview with the famous folklorist. Sergey Nikolaevich, we are talking on the eve of the concert, opening the program of the Russian-Finnish festival "Cuckoo". A joint evening with the famous guest from Finland Anna-Marie Kivimyaki is a bright start. As far as I understand, is this a kind of meeting of two folk culture-Russian and Finnish?

Yes, the concert with Anna-Marie will present the audience of the festival of this year. Until I make up how our creative alliance will turn out, but there is a chance that we will listen to each other, and we will have a desire to play together. Maybe already on the main site in Vyborg we will make a large program. Music as a profession, especially the music of a non -classical sense, involves such free contacts.

Musicians usually go to creative interaction with interest in search of a common language and the formation of a common environment. The July festival will be the second “cuckoo”. You treat him as a second child who is easier to educate, because you know what mistakes can be avoided? Or as a second parachute jump, which is more complicated, because you already know what you are going to for?

I have no paralyzing fear. Although there are a lot of aggravating circumstances related mainly to interaction with state structures. Our creative initiatives support, but everything rests on the complexity of financing. The “settings” of issues with the administrations of the city and the region, the search for a general understanding of the model of the event takes a lot of strength.

You can come up with a lot, and life always offers surprises. Therefore, all the festivals, and especially those that are in the stage of “getting to the feet”, I consider in the future of growth. This year we again have to deal with the inertia of the system, but we are highly motivated and will solve all these issues. Therefore, if you choose from the states you proposed, then I am just at the position of calm.

Another project, often mentioned through a comma with your last name, is an “ethnosphere”. Is this an example of “free contacts of musicians for the formation of a common environment”? These people are not in sight, but they are very strong professionals. The musicians are very different, but Sergey Filatov, a pianist with a beautiful background and education, was and remains the main ideologist and locomotive of this story from the very beginning.

By the will of fate, he once talked with representatives of the folklore wave, including with me and Andrei Kotov, and the direction of people who were looking in one direction began to form. The main thing here is an interested attitude to traditional music. The alliance has existed for more than ten years. It is easy and comfortable for us with each other, it is possible because we rarely see each other, so there are neither questions of dividing space, nor problems like “Who is commanding us in the kitchen today?

Our meetings are always a holiday, they resemble watches of achievements. The community continues to develop, but, to my great regret, it has no serious resonance - perhaps because it is not a commercial nature. And the project of the Moscow Art Trio will probably be a counter-medal? In Ethnosphere, independent creative associates is wide and spacious. And you have lived a dense jazz trio for more than a quarter of a century - the anniversary was last year.

Moscow Art Trio is a significant part of my life. Yes, we know each other since the year, and the official date of birth is June of the year. Then a large jazz festival with American stars was held in Moscow, and we - no one who was unknown to anyone - was called to participate. Although in separateness we already had some kind of our own creative biographies. We hastily prepared the program, they gave us a very unsuccessful time for the performance, none of the spectators understood anything, but we indicated in the sky here I must say that the Russian history of the Moscow Art Trio is minimal; For Russia, this is such a “team-fiction”, and only people who are really interested in the musical process knew about the existence of such a composition.

The main part of our career we worked in Europe, Germany gave us the name and creative biography in the life of the trio were different periods - from very intensive work, when we baked programs like pies, to complete lull, we are all not just friends, but almost like brothers. Last year and for each of us was the anniversary - we are all the same, the year of birth. I was born on January 1, and all the concerts of the year were held for me as anniversary.

Arkady Schilkloper - Oktyabrsky, Mikhail Alperin - Noyabrsky. At each other's anniversary concerts, we visited the Moscow Art Trio formally no one closed, but in the beginning of the X there was some kind of uncertainty in understanding where we go further. By that time, we have already done a lot, critics noticed that we very generously handed out musical ideas to the world, and sometimes one composition included three to five creative ideas, each of which could be built by a musical direction.

We were seething, we opened as some kind of source, we did not feel sorry for, and we all handed out right and right.At some point, the seething stopped, and Misha-our leader-regarded this as some kind of dead end and I, in this sense, a supporter of a calm approach: if you find your topic and carry it further, this is not necessarily stagnation in our history!

.. I sometimes listening to those discs, and I hear that they did not lose their relevance at all, they are fresh both in accordance with the presentation and by ideas, we discovered an interesting and original path. Mikhail is a wonderful improviser, Arkady is a person familiar with jazz, I am a folklorist, we were representatives of completely different directions, but everyone had a classic background, we worked at the junction of genres, opened new worlds, and this all inspired us.

It seemed to us that this should become something contagious, but over the past 25 years, I can only remember three or four projects in different countries, one way or another copy the Moscow Art Trio model. You worked a lot and continue to work with jazz musicians. In your opinion, folk and jazz are two different worlds?

Or are they related? They are from one root. Jazz, of course, was nourished by folk traditions, and in some cunning way or God's craft, combining a lot of musical flows, put them together. The roots of American jazz are obvious to everyone. And with a European jazz, the picture is somewhat different. I have a funny story called "On the History of Jazz." This is almost a feuilleton that jazz was born not in America, but in Europe, and accidentally got to America.

If we talk about the origins, then there is a lot of in common between folklore and jazz. This is the same folklore, he was just born in a new light in the new conditions and received a new name - “jazz”. When you begin to understand the musical parameters - the rhythm, timbre, fret, the general composition, and so on - you understand that the Americans, as a very young nation, heard everything very correctly, took it very correctly, very correctly digested and turned into a product very correctly.

Which rightfully took its honorable place in the musical world. The history was destined that during such a serious movement of peoples and the movement of cultures, they had to give birth to some kind of culture. American Spirichuels is something very expensive, close and understandable to me. I met full analogies in the Russian tradition. Therefore, when I hear that “Russians know and sing blues,” I say that these Americans sing traditional Russian songs, just as a result of some historical shifts, our Russian audience is more familiar with jazz today than with its own root music.

Here's about root music, let's talk. You have been engaged in the Russian ethnik for 34 years. For such a period, they have probably seen a lot and you can draw some conclusions about its condition and prospects. How do you think they are rainbow or deplorable? If we talk about the existence of traditional culture, then we must remember that it was on our soil that a serious historical experiment was performed.

Its results will have to analyze scientists engaged in culture in general and traditional culture in particular. Our political ideologies could not think about reformatting cultural codes. The task, perhaps, was never called, but was set. A new type of man was formed - a new culture was needed for him, a person had to be taken out of the bosom of faith and from attachment to his own traditions and roots.

If this experiment lasted 10 years, probably, then everything would return to the previous rails. But this year we celebrate the flying of the Great Revolution or the October Revolution-today this event is already called differently. This experiment, stretching for several generations, gave results and bore fruits - a person’s recoding occurred. But now, almost at the final care of tradition, in the 70s, e and 90s-at that time I just traveled around the villages-at that moment some kind of craft for me, it can probably be called God, suddenly an interest in this outgoing culture arose, in these roots.

The tradition was grabbed by the tail, it did not have full -fledged successors or heirs, but the army of sympathetic - in the person of young people. They, that is, we did not let her disappear completely. And today, our children take the baton, and plunge into this area much deeper than we are. And most importantly, the number of such people is more and more - this circle is growing.

The press does not mean this, no one writes about this at all. And today's layman knows nothing about this. But these processes go. A new one will appear - the third - generation, and we will see how it will carry this banner of tradition further. For me, for example, it is obvious that a person without roots is lost in the world. Without roots, he is a passage of the field.

A tree without roots falls or dries and goes to firewood - it is also useful, but they quickly burn out.