Vyacheslav Ganelin

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Vyacheslav "Slava" Ganelin ( Russian Вячеслав Ганелин , born December 17, 1944 in Kraskow near Moscow ) is an Israeli pianist , keyboard player , band leader and composer of avant-garde jazz of Russian origin. With his Ganelin Trio, he was one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian and Lithuanian jazz scene of the 1970s and 1980s.

Vyacheslav Ganelin

Live and act

Ganelin was born in a village near Moscow; like many Russians at that time, his parents moved to the Baltic States in the 1950s . He began to play the piano at the age of four and made his first attempts at composing at the age of 14. He then studied at the Conservatory in Vilnius , formed student big bands and performed in the youth club “Neringa Café”. After graduating, Ganelin became the head of the Russian Dramatic Theater in Vilnius and played jazz in trio formations.

At the end of the 1960s began working with the drummer Vladimir Tarasov ; Their duo achieved their breakthrough in the Soviet jazz scene at the 1970 Gorky Jazz Festival . A year later, the saxophonist Wladimir Tschekassin joined them, creating the Ganelin Trio ; In 1976 the trio made their first appearance abroad on the Warsaw Jazz Jamboree (LP on Poljazz ). Shortly after this concert, her first records appeared in the USSR on the Melodija label, Con Anima and Concerto Grosso . Several tours followed in Eastern and later also in Western European countries, such as Italy in 1981 and Romania in 1983 ; They visited Great Britain in 1984 and the USA in 1986 , where they performed together with the Rova Saxophone Quartet in San Francisco (heard on the double CD San Francisco Holidays ).

The Ganelin Trio existed until 1987; then Ganelin left the USSR and emigrated to Israel . There he took the first name Slava . In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tarassow and Tschekassin made duo recordings on Leo ; Ganelin founded a trio (with the old name Ganelin Trio ) in his new home with the cellist and bassist Victor Fonarev and the drummer Mika Markovich . 1992/93 Ganelin recorded the solo album On Stage ... Backstage for Leo Records .

Ganelin was also active as a film and theater composer; he composed the music for the opera The Red-haired Liar and the Soldier performed at the Bolshoi Theater and for the musical The Devilish Bride . One of his rare appearances as a sideman was his participation in the album Viennese Concert by the Lithuanian saxophonist Petras Vyšniauskas in 1989. Vysniauskas and drummer Klaus Kugel belong to the Ganelin Trio Priority , which has existed since 1999 and which made a highly acclaimed appearance at the 2007 New York Vision Festival would have.

The music of the Ganelin / Chekassin / Tarasov trio

Slava Ganelin (2017). Photo: Mark Nakoykher

According to Bert Noglik , the special characteristic of the Ganelin Trio's music was on the one hand "stylistic carefree", on the other hand the "elaboration of large forms with compositional freedom", as in the recordings or records of the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of which on audio cassettes had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union in order to be released in the West (by Leo Feigin on his London label Leo Records ).

The trio, formed by Ganelin in 1971, created, according to Ian Carr, a “kind of abstract music that came from the tradition of the European free jazz movement of the late 1960s, but had its very own identity. In the music of the trio, composition played a very important role. Each longer work, each album was conceptually designed differently and had a differentiated structure and instrumentation. The members of the trio played around 15 different instruments. Also were included parodic elements, children's songs and set pieces from Slavic folk music and classical music. "

Vladimir Tschekassin described this musical mixture as follows: “We take some elements from jazz, others from chamber music or the folklore of different peoples. Sometimes we also use the naive techniques of the children, and everything finds influence in new combinations that have not yet been heard. ”Cook and Morton see parallels in the trio's concerts with Roland Kirk , because Vladimir Tschekassin occasionally played several wind instruments at the same time; on the theatrics of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and - in the quieter, well-composed passages - on the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which had a significant influence on Soviet jazz in the 1960s.

The music of the Ganelin Trio was very popular in the intellectual circles of the late USSR and also caught the attention of the jazz scene in the West. The Melody Maker wrote about the publication of the concert recording from Berlin that it was "one of the most exciting events that free music has ever brought to the stage". The concert recording Live in East Berlin is considered to be one of Ganelin's best recordings, as is the work Ancora da Capo, made two years later .

After the trio's appearance at the Berlin Jazz Days, Joachim-Ernst Berendt expressed himself euphorically, "The Granelin Trio produces the wildest, yet best-organized free jazz I've heard in years." The critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton consider the Penguin Guide to Jazz Ancora da Capo as a “masterpiece” and Granelin's role as a “definitive performance”. The concert recordings are "of monolithic intensity, which express everything that is best about this band, namely radiant expressiveness, dense, passionate play, humor and irony".

Selected discographic references

  • Poco A Loco (Leo, 1978)
  • Catalog: Live in East Germany (Leo, 1979)
  • Encores (Leo, 1978-81) Leo Records
  • Ancora da Capo (Leo, 1980)
  • Non Troppo ( has kind , n. D.)
  • Ganelin Trio Priority Live at the Lithuan National Philharmony Vilnius (Nemu, 2005, DVD)
  • Slava Ganelin / Vladimir Homyakov : Neuma (Leo, 2018)

literature

Web links

Notes / individual evidence

  1. ↑ That was a mistake, according to Cook & Morton, because Ganelin's new band was in no way comparable to the original trio of the 1970 / 1980s.
  2. ↑ cf. Cook & Morton, 2nd edition. Article about Petras Vysniauskas.
  3. ↑ B. Noglik Jazzwerkstatt international Berlin (GDR) 1981, pp. 29–46
  4. ↑ Noglik, cit. n. M. Kunzler
  5. ↑ cit. to Carr / Priestley.
  6. ↑ cit. after F. Starr, p. 259
  7. ↑ S. Frederick Starr writes on the theatrics of the Galein Trio: “The audience was thrilled when Chekassin pretended that he was in danger of falling asleep during a long passage from Ganelin; and the Romanian author Virgil Mihaiu wrote of Ganelin himself how he 'got into the body of the piano and began to work in its bowels'. "Quoted from Starr, p. 262.
  8. ↑ cf. Cook & Morton, 6th edition.
  9. ↑ cit. according to Starr, p. 251.
  10. ↑ So Frederick Starr. In the second edition of the Penguin Guide, Cook and Morton awarded the work the highest rating of four stars with the crown. For editorial reasons, they are postponing the sixth edition of this award to the new edition of the album Ancora da Capo .
  11. ↑ The recordings were initially released as a double LP under the title Live in Leningrad, Vol.1 & 2 (Leo LR 108/109). Feigin exchanged the second concert on November 16, 1980 on the new CD (LR 109) for a recording of a Berlin gig a few weeks later. See Cook & Morton, 6th edition.
  12. ↑ cit. after F. Starr, p. 261.
  13. ↑ cit. and over. after Cook & Morton, 6th edition -
personal data
SURNAME Ganelin, Vyacheslav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ganelin, slava; Ganelin, Vyacheslav; Ганелин, Вячеслав (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli pianist and band leader
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Kraskow near Moscow