Alexander Naumowitsch Zfasman

Alexander Naumowitsch "Bob" Zfasman , as Zfassman transcribed ( Russian Александр Наумович Цфасман , scientific. Transliteration Aleksandr Naumović Cfasman ; born December 1, ^jul. / 14. December  1906 ^greg. In Zaporizhia , † 20 February 1971 in Moscow ) was a Russian jazz bandleader, composer and pianist of swing . He was one of the pioneers of jazz in the Soviet Union , was with his band for a time an important star of Soviet light music ( Estrada ) one of the most popular jazz musicians of the 1920s to 1940s.

Life

Zfasman grew up in Nizhny Novgorod in a Jewish family; at the age of seven he learned violin and piano at the local music school. He later studied at the Moscow Conservatory with the teacher Felix Blumenfeld ; In 1926 he founded the AMA Jazz ensemble , the first large jazz formation in Moscow. The band consisted of trumpet, trombone, drums, banjo, clarinet (with second part saxophone) and Zfasman on the piano; Instead of the double bass or tuba, he used a baritone saxophone. This band performed in the Hermitage Club , in restaurants and in large cinemas. The first radio recordings were made in 1927, shortly afterwards the first recordings ( Harry Warren's Semiole and Vincent Youmans ' Hallelujah! ), The first jazz documents of the USSR . The music of AMA Jazz was influenced by the hot jazz style of Benny Peyton and Sidney Bechet . Then in 1937 further recordings were made, such as the titles To a Far Way, At the Seashore, Unsuccessfull Dating and a version of the Polish tango Ta ostatnia niedziela (Parting) . In addition to his engagements with his band, Zfasman appeared as a solo pianist and also created a number of smaller works, such as the ballet suite Rot-Front for orchestra (1931), a concerto for piano and jazz orchestra (1941), and an interlude for clarinet and big band (dedicated to Benny Goodman) (1944) and wrote theater and film music. His compositions are heavily influenced by George Gershwin ; In 1946 he also got one of the first performances of Rhapsody in Blue in the USSR. In 1951 he was given the opportunity to perform as a soloist in a new piano concerto by Dmitri Shostakovich . From 1939 Zfasman also worked for the All Union radio. During the Second World War he wrote patriotic war songs like It Makes No Difference or Young Sailors .

Zfasman was a pioneer in the field of Soviet jazz; he was the first soloist and the first Russian to practice the new music on a full-time basis. Their "aura of defiant nonconformism" (Starr) contributed to the popularity of Zfasman and his band, especially among the youth. In 1928 the AMA jazz band was renamed Moskowskie rebjata (Moscow Boys) and expanded. In 1933 they had reached the size of the then usual US swing bands. The most prominent musicians in the band were the saxophonist Alexander Wasiliew (with a slight echo of the sound of Benny Carter ), the saxophonists and clarinetists Emil Geigner and Alexander Rivtschun , the trombonist Iossif David , the drummer László Olach and the trumpeter Mikhail Frumkin , who played the The growl technique of Ellington trumpeter Bubber Miley . However, only the best musicians in the band could improvise; many were army musicians or came from the provinces. In addition to the AMA band , Zfasman led a total of six bands in his career up to 1952, such as the Thirteen Virtuosos from 1933 to 1937 and the Jazz Orchestra of the Radio Committee of the USSR from 1939 to 1946, which had a varied repertoire with pieces from the repertoire of Rosita Serrano ( Kiss me, please please kiss me ), Andrews Sisters ( Josef, Josef ), Rina Ketty ( J'attendrai ) or many English bands of that time and during the Second World War they increasingly followed the style of the bands of Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman approached. In the end, Zfasman led a large orchestra in the style of the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

In his piano playing he was based on the Stride Piano style of James P. Johnson or Fats Waller ; later in the post-war years he also processed influences from Art Tatum and z. T. Count Basie . Zfasman's greatest hits in the USSR were American jazz standards such as Blue Skies or Chattanooga Choo Choo ; but he also composed his own titles such as The Sound of Jazz and short wistful ballads. In the late 1930s he managed to escape the harassment of the cultural bureaucracy. In 1939 he was able to negotiate a new record contract for which he put together an eleven-person ensemble.

With the beginning of the Cold War, cultural policy changed. In the summer of 1946, as part of the struggle against Western influence, Zfasman was robbed of his orchestra, the jazz orchestra of the USSR Radio Committee, and the orchestra was disbanded a year later. The experience with the Soviet cultural bureaucracy made him bitter: In 1957, when asked whether he was planning a new orchestra, he replied: “I'm old. I have a good salary, a dacha in the country, a wife and a car. The composers' association only requires me to deliver a new march, a polka or a waltz to her every month […] so what am I supposed to struggle with […] ”. In the late 1950s and 1960s, Zfasman occasionally wrote jazz songs, appeared as a pianist, music critic, publicist and jury member, but withdrew more and more from the public.

literature

• Dmitri Dragilew: Labirinty russkogo tango [labyrinths of Russian tango] . Aletheia-Verlag, St. Petersburg 2008, ISBN 978-5-91419-021-4 .
• Martin Lücke: Jazz in totalitarianism . Lit, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7538-5 ( limited preview in Google book search).
• Zfassmann, Alexandr Naumowitsch . In: Carl Dahlhaus (Ed.): Riemann Musiklexikon . 12th, completely revised edition. Personal section: L – Z , supplementary volume. Schott, Mainz 1975, p. 949 .
• S. Frederick Starr : Red and Hot. Jazz in Russia 1917–1990 . hannibal, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-85445-062-1 .
• S. Frederick Starr: Jazz in the USSR . In: That's Jazz - The Sound of the 20th Century (exhibition catalog), Darmstadt, 1988.

Web links

• English-language portrait from partefon.ru
• Discography
• English-language podcast about Russian jazz history with a portrait of Tsfasman

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marina Lobanova:  Cfasman, Alexandr Naumović. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 4 (Camarella - Couture). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1114-4  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)