27/01/2022
Dialogue 15:
Alfred Zimmerlin & Anton Svetlichny
"Sound is not something like a brick or whatever. Sound is something that’s alive"
In the fifteenth issue of Stravinsky's Dialogues: Switzerland, the conversation is conducted by a composer, impoviser Alfred Zimmerlin and a composer and pianist Anton Svetlichny.
Stravinsky Dialigues: Alfred Zimmerlin & Anton Svetlichny
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— Actually maybe we’re not quite different from each other because… Actually that should be my first question. Because I know about you that you’re a multidimensional musician, you’re composing music, you’re improvising music, you’re writing and thinking about music, you’re teaching music. And with some small changes that’s also me. I’m a composer, I’m a piano player, not cello but piano, I play different styles of music from jazz and classical to free improvisation of course. Not so often but if it’s needed yes. So I teach musical theory, in the recent years I also write more extensive [intensively] than before about music and about contemporary music in particular. So different countries, different generations but we’re a bit the same. At least that looks like. So the first question that I want to ask is about this kind of experience. I have a friend of mine who asked me a bit of time ago about these different kinds of occupations. Are they helpful for you or are they… kind of a problem? Do you have time for all of them, do you have enough concentration, do you have to switch from one to another kind of musical experience and what this versatility gives to you? And maybe does it give you some insights or maybe it gives you some troubles? What can you say about it?
— Okay. When I’m asked about my profession I don’t say I’m composer, I don’t say I’m improviser, I don’t say I’m musicologist or whatever, or I don’t say I’m teacher. I just say I’m musician. So for me musician is something that’s a whole thing, you know. It’s all together, it’s music. Music is making it in the very moment, music is creating it, thinking about it, reflecting it and also teaching it. It’s all… I have this understanding of my profession that all these things go together. And I think the most important thing behind it is that you love music.
— Definitely, yes. So okay, as I understood you started to improvise music in the age of 20+, 21, 22, yeah? Is that right?
— Improvising, I started to improvise as a kid as everybody does. Every kid starts to improvise. And I was so lucky that nobody told me, "Stop it." So I went on when I was 16 and with 18 I had my first free jazz band. So yeah, it was just natural to make it, you know. I had no idea about improvising, I just made it. And yeah, when I started to improvise together with other people I had to discover that listening is a very important thing there. I didn’t know that before. Of course it’s important with music but nobody told me when you improvise you have to listen. So I had to learn that. So I really had to learn step by step everything. And just by doing and just by making it together I was in a scene in Aarau in Switzerland, it’s a small town of I don’t know how many inhabitants it has now, maybe around 20.000. So quite a small city. But with a very strong cultural life. And there were a couple of musicians around and we were just yeah playing together, having jams. And so I went into it and then I had an encounter with a musician that lived in Zurich. And he said, "Hey, come play with us, I have a big band project, you have to be a part of it". So I went to Zurich and played there. And I started more and more to enter all scene in Switzerland and I learned so much from elder people, you know, musicians that were older than me, maybe ten years older or twenty years older. But they gave me so much and yeah. It was just a collecting of experience. So I came into it, yeah.
— And through your experience, what do you consider are the changes in musical landscape? Maybe in Switzerland, maybe even broader, in Europe, between the middle of 1970s and current time. What changed in improvisational scene or maybe in musical scene in general?
— From the mid 1970s to today, wow. Well, as a told you, I started playing free jazz. And of course from the moment when I could read music I also started to write music, I also started to compose. Little unimportant stuff, but I did it, you know. So at this time I had… Thinking back, free jazz was very much present but not only. There were already some musicians who wanted to go further in improvisation or wanted to discover new areas. And these were the musicians that interested me because I was at the same time or in the same amount interested also into contemporary music and into composed music. And the scene of the Swiss composers at this time was very mixed. So it had a very strong conservative side but it had also some people who were very experimental in their thinking. And for instance, Hans Wüthrich was one of them or also my teacher Hans Ulrich Lehmann (Hans Wüthrich was also a teacher of mine, of course). And others who were thinking in the… Urs Peter Schneider, for instance, they were thinking in a very experimental way. And they influenced strongly also a younger scene. I think it was a very exciting time actually, the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. And also the different genres in music they were not anymore so clear. So the improvisers were very much interested into composition and the composers started to be interested into improvisation and they started also to have contact and exchange. And within this scene I was lucky to know a lot of people and I was lucky also to be able to bring people together. So somehow I could also help a bit to… Yeah, that, the contact grew stronger in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Also the different improvisers scene in Basel and Zurich started to have more contacts, Bern started to have more contacts. So in the beginning they were like small islands and they grew more and more together. And if I now compare to today… Phew, it’s a totally different time. If you look at the scene, there are a lot of very very competent improvisers around and especially there are a lot of people around who are able to perform contemporary music as to improvise on a very high level as well. And sometimes they also compose or yeah. So there is a very big creative potential around. And astonishingly there can be also seen something like this idea of the island. I mean this has maybe to do with this geographic situation of Switzerland that Zurich and Basel and Bern and Lucerne that they have their own scenes. Although they are of course in contact but these scenes develop in a particular way. And in Zurich there is on one side a very interesting improvisers scene which I’m part of. Also a lot of young people coming, new people coming, but there are a lot of interesting composers. And I think in recent years especially in the field of music theater there happened a lot. In Zurich experimental music theater that’s going more into non-drama music. And Basel has also a strong improvisers scene which is also partly influenced by what’s happening at the Musik-Akademie Basel, Hochschule für Musik (or at the University of Music in Basel). Uli Fussenegger is that of the contemporary music department. I think you have him in an interview already.
— No, but yes, probably he was there, yes.
— I’m working there as an improvisation professor. Some of the people who study with us, who do their master in Basel in improvisation, they decide to stay. And they stay in Basel and the scene grows. But there was of course already a very strong scene there and a lot of very interesting people. And we also try to connect the students with the local scene that also grows together and gives a creative climate. Another side of coming also out of this school is a strong ensemble scene. And now the interesting thing is that the young ensembles… I mean, there are also established ensembles, Collegium Novum in Zurich or Contrechamps in Geneva or Phoenix in Basel. And so there are quite some ensembles which have already a long tradition and history. But there are a lot of young ensembles coming out. Sometimes very small, sometimes bigger ensembles. And they think in a very experimental way. They think about curating their programs, maybe they even invite a curator for one special program or they work very much in a collaborative manner. So there is a lot of collaboration with composers. They invite, for instance, a composer to work with them, to create a piece together with them. But there is not this hierarchy, here is the composer and here is the ensemble, they get the score and they perform. But they meet on the level of their eyes. And they do the work together and they create it together. This has also a lot to do with experience of improvisation from both sides. So you see, at the moment there, and of course there are also collaborations with visual artists and so there is a very open situation. And I think it’s… I’m really excited about that, to perceive that, what happens at the moment, what young people do. And this also influences myself and my thinking. So I think this is… I mean, I’m already old. But you know, there is an exchange between and this is an extremely fruitful situation I think.
Alfred Zimmerlin, Faristamo Eller & Vlady Bystrov in Organhall of EAMT, 5.05.2018
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Free improvisation by Alfred Zimmerlin (cello), Faristamo Eller (piano) & Vlady Bystrov (live electronics) in Organhall of Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn 5.05.2018
— Okay, thank you, that’s great. I particularly like the idea of making music together, the composer and the ensemble. I think that’s a great perspective and good that you have it there in Switzerland. So I’m not sure about next question. Okay, let’s do a little kind of intermedia. So I know that you teach and you said it, you teach free improvisation. So let’s imagine that you have before you new just formed ensemble which wants to play free improvisational project. What can be the practical advice you can give them? Just one, maybe the most important one. Maybe not one, maybe several.
— I say I teach improvisation. This doesn’t mean that I understand myself to be a teacher. Because I think you can’t teach improvisation. I think you have to teach yourself. You have to do all the experiences yourself because you are the creative musician, you have to create yourself. And I can’t give you any recipes how to create yourself, you have to find them yourselves. What I can do is I’m creating situations where you can make these experiences. And there I can help. And I can create an atmosphere where interesting things can happen. So that’s my main concern as a teacher. Of course, I can also have my tools and we analyze what’s happening and stuff like that. And we try to verbalize what happens which is very important to think about, to reflect. The reflection starts to work. But basically if you ask me what’s your advice… Maybe I would say, first of all I want to listen to you just play.
— That’s perfect advice I think.
— Play and free improvisation. And then I can give a feedback. And then we can start to find ways.
— Great, thank you. Actually I have a small ensemble here in Rostov-on-Don, in my town in Russia. We don’t do only improvised music but we try from time to time some improvisational practices and I… Yes, I think I’ll tell them about what did you just say. So now let’s speak about relations between your compositional and improvisational, maybe instrumental experience. There is a problem that interests me for some time now. The problem of notation or fixation of musical material. Because you have two ways of making music (by composition or by improvisation), how do you decide that this kind of material I want to notate, deserve notation, and this kind of material I leave for live, I can generate it live. How did you make difference between these two kinds of materials, where is the border between them for you?
— That’s a very difficult question. First of all, maybe we have to question about material, what is material. I think sound is not something like a brick or [concrete] or whatever. Sound is something that’s alive. So it’s kind of like a living being. So is a living being material? So I think of course we are also this material if you want to say so. But I mean I guess you understand what I mean with it.
— Yeah, sure.
— Yeah, it’s something that’s alive. If there are the sounds you have to ask the sounds, “What do you need?” Does this sound need to be totally fixed?
— Yes, sure.
— Yes? Write it down. Does the sound need to be every time a little bit different? Maybe you notate it in a more open way that the ensemble or the performers they create it in the very moment. Or if you want to have a sound that is coming totally out of a common flow of time? Leave it totally open. So I think it has also a lot to do with timing. If you notate something very strictly with a pulse or whatever in this way, you have to coordinate in an ensemble. And the coordination very often means it’s one person who is responsible for the flow of the time, one person gives the time. This person of course in the ensemble can change permanently. So it’s not always the same person giving the time. But it’s always one person being responsible for one moment. And in free improvised music this is totally different. There everybody at the same time is responsible for the time. And I think you could question also this side whether you want to have a sound in a strict time or whether you want to have a sound in an open time. Going through everybody, also through the audience of course. Because the audience always is also part of it.
— Okay, thank you. So that gives chance for next question about maybe not audience but about listening experience. When you listen your own improvisations as a listener afterwards do you have some special experience? Did you experience differ from inside during the time of improvisation and after it when you’re listening it? Can you maybe describe this difference? How often or how much do you listen as a composer? Do you have some kind of specific composer type of listening?
— Maybe first one thing. If you are standing at the Neva and are looking at the water flowing that’s very different. And if you’re looking at the photograph of the Neva from the same angle…
— Definitely.
— So the live experience of listening to music, creating live in the moment, or creating it yourself is very different from the recording. So the recording is like the photograph. So listening to the recording means… Yeah, you have to be aware of that. And well. You’ve grown older, what you’ve played before is part of your experience, it’s in your backpack. And you listen to the recording with this experience in your backpack. So you listen already differently than you listened before while making. And then you remember, “I’m here, I made this and this decision, okay, why did I do this?” And so on. You can start to reflect what you didn’t do while making it. Because when you’re playing free improvised music you’re not thinking with words, you’re thinking in music and this is a different part of your brain. So it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen in your brain but it’s in another part of your brain. So thinking in words is much too slow when you’re improvising. So you don’t think in words. But when you listen back to it you can think in words and you can start to verbalize what happened in certain moments. And this gives you another experience to put in your backpack. So with every listening experience your backpack grows, or the content of your backpack grows. And next day you improvise with this experience. Now the influence between the experience of improvised music or the influence from improvised music to composed music… Well, this is also a very big theme. And I think it’s very individual for people who make both. So for me it was a development. When I started to improvise I had here improvisation. And I started to compose, I had here composition. Two things that had nothing to do with each other. And this was actually for a long time because the methods to make music are very very different. When you… I mean, the goal is the same, you want to have good music in the end. Hopefully. But the process to get there is totally different. When you improvise you think a lot about what you do before you do it and afterwards when you’ve done it. But while you’re making it you’re totally in the music and in the very moment creating it. And this is a process in real time. When you’re composing you can start at one part, write something down, think. You have all time of the world to make it.
Alfred Zimmerlin :: Klaviertrio aus den “Nachtstundenstücken”
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Alfred ZIMMERLIN (*1955) Klaviertrio aus den “Nachtstundenstücken” (Russian Premiere, 2010-2012), for violin, cello and piano Mondrian Ensemble (Switzerland) Ivana Pristasova, violin Karolina Öhman, cello Tamar Kordzaia, piano Saturday, May 21st 2016 Concert Hall Jaani Kirik
— I just remembered this quotation, I’m not sure about who said it, yes. “In the improvisation you just have fifteen seconds.”
— Steve Lacy, was it?
— Yeah, Steve Lacy.
— It’s a great quotation. It’s a really great quotation. And yeah. But you have also the possibility to throw things away which is something important in composition. In improvisation you can’t. Every sound you do is a fact and it’s there. And you can’t change it. Even if this sound is a mistake. So somehow you could say in improvised music you can’t make any mistakes because you only can produce facts and you have to deal with these facts. And if one of these facts you create in a moment you discover, “Oh, this was not such a good idea to bring this fact”, it’s there anyway and everybody hears it and deals with it and you yourself deal also with it. And maybe ten seconds later it was a good decision that you produced this, that in the moment sounded like a bad decision. So somehow yeah, that’s why I say you can’t make mistakes. In composition you can make many mistakes but you also can correct them. So these are two different things for me. Growing older, it grew more and more together I must say. Of course the reflection of composing influences a lot what you do when you improvise and your musical experiences when you improvise especially how to deal with time or how to deal with sound, how you can create a sound, how you can give life to a sound. This influences a lot how you compose. I think this… And it doesn’t mean… I mean you can write anything down and you can improvise free on two different trails but of course it influences each other. Now in the more recent decade of my work I start more and more in finding ways to combine it also and to look for collaboration with performers. Even if it’s a virtual collaboration, you know. That you design the collaboration on the paper and it happens later. So it can also be a remote teamwork. But the word “teamwork” becomes more and more important for me. Or thinking about teamwork.
Антон Светличный - "Пятна" для сопрано и трех инструментов (2020)
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Anton Svetlichny "Spots" for soprano and three instruments. Non-lecture hall "Petya and the wolves" No. 15 Moscow, Prokofiev Museum, September 9, 2020. Olga Vlasova (soprano) Alice Grazhevskaya (violin) Andrey Jurgenson (clarinet) Ekaterina Vasheruk (piano)
— Actually you just almost predicted my next question. It’s very simple. Do you often include improvised sections in your pieces?
— Yes. In more recent ensemble pieces, yes. Or it’s more kind of like a guided improvisation. But there is also some free improv in it. So I just two months ago I finished a piece for recorder and ensemble written for the ensemble of Helena Winkelman. And the recorder player totally improvises free. So he has only very few moments where he is said, yeah, could go this direction. But all these decisions he does himself.
— So it is written for this particular performer, yes?
— Yes.
— And if you want this piece to be performed by someone else, do you give some instructions for the type of performance or type of improvisation he needs to do? Or it’s totally free? Because of course different performer will do it probably very different way.
— Yes. And this is welcome. I mean, a piece doesn’t have to sound every time the same. Hopefully not. It’s interesting because the name of our talk is connected with Stravinsky and Stravinsky kind of was the contrary. He once said that his recordings with Columbia Orchestra are part of the score. And I must say luckily nobody does this. Everybody’s looking for the…
— I even read the article when someone compared the performances given by Stravinsky himself with the indications in the score, metronomical indications, for example. And Stravinsky contradicts himself.
— Yes, yes. Hopefully.
— Hopefully!
— Yes, I mean I’ve seen once a movie where he conducted. This was impressive. Absolutely. How he suggests it, the gesture of the music to the orchestra, like a cat kind of. So it was really great to see that. But this in brackets. I mean, there are composers who really want to define what they do and want that it sounds every time really as it’s written. And I’m not this kind of type. I like when performers are looking in their own way at a score and show me things in the score which I even might not have thought of. And I can discover something new. I like this open situation a lot. So it’s coming back to this piece with the solo recorder. I mean, there are a few indications you might discover that it’s the same piece. But with another recorder player it would sound different. I mean, Conrad Steinmann is a fantastic recorder player. He will do the first performance of the piece. I could very well imagine that also other recorder players could play it, who are able to improvise in such a virtuoso way as Conrad knows it. I know people who are able to do that. So yeah.
— So okay. A bit different type of question maybe. I tried to listen some of your pieces before I came here and read something about you at your personal site. And several times I met phrases, sentences about the heterogeneity which like in music we should write to introduce into music. But when I listened to the… So when I started listening to your music I estimated maybe not collage-like music but actually what I heard was quite homogeneous to me. So what’s heterogeneity for you? What do you mean by this word? Which type of materials do you try to put together? What do you want to do with them, try to find their integral unity or maybe try to mark the contrast between them and so on? Maybe I just didn’t find the best examples of heterogeneity in your music. So which pieces do you recommend to listen? And maybe importantly where to listen them?
— Well… Yeah, I mean, heterogeneity is extremely important to me that things that even might not have to do something together come together. So, for instance, the sound of the environment enters a composed piece. So it’s like you open up the window and the outer world enters the piece. And there are several pieces using that, for instance… But in a wider sense I’m in compositions I’m often looking for different situations. As an example, on the layer of harmony, and you have very different principles of dealing with harmony, and I construct them in a way that there are bridges in between. That means that I can modulate from one way of dealing with harmony to another having, like in traditional modulation, having something in common. So you have kind of heterogenic harmonic concept in a piece while moving in an organic way from one to another. And this happens a lot in many of my pieces, this way of thinking, of finding bridges between different situations and modulating from situation A to situation B.
— Okay, thank you. So just simple question to finish this part and come to the next. Is there something in music which you never never will do?
— Ugh, I don’t know. The biggest part of my life is gone. There are still things I haven’t done yet.
— Maybe not because of lack of time but because you refuse to do something. Is there something you refuse to do in music?
— Tasteless things I think. Then again the question comes, what is taste? And this is a very personal thing. So things I personally think that are tasteless I wouldn’t do. But I can very well imagine to write a piece in C major for instance when I find a new context for it that this C major sounds totally fresh to my ears. And I might do it. So I try… I kind of try, in every piece I try to find another approach or slightly different approach from what I did before. So I try to invent something new and not to repeat too much the old ideas. Because when you start to repeat yourself you have to stop, I think.
— I know one Russian composer more or less your generation who speaks, at least spoke before the same idea. His name is Victor Ekimovsky and he…
— Ah!
— You know him, yes?
— Of course, I know his music.
— He said several times, maybe many times that he doesn’t want to repeat himself, he wants to invent something new in each new piece by him. So… And this is good bridge for my next question about maybe relationships maybe between Russia and Switzerland. Because it’s always interesting to know how something that happens here is seen from abroad. So what do you know about contemporary Russian music? Maybe of your generation, like Ekimovsky, Tarnopolsky, Smirnov and so on. Maybe about more recent generations. I know that your music was performed several times in Russia, at least two times in Saint-Petersburg. Maybe you have some else contacts with Russia?
— Well, I have a very important contact to Sergej Tchirkov, a young player and a really complete musician.
— He’s fantastic player, yeah.
— Incredible musician, also improviser. It happened recently also to improvise together. And it was a fantastic experience. And I was so lucky to write also music for him. And it’s a huge piece called Akkordeonbuch (Accordion book). It’s consisting of seventeen pieces. But again, I’m talking about me, I should talk about Russians.
— No no no, but you can!
— I mean, this is for me a very important contact and friendship. So we have a very good exchange with each other.
— Do you know about Russian improvisational scene?
— Yes, a little bit. I mean, there just arrived a young Russian improviser in Zurich, living here. We already met. And, you know, I’m getting old, my brain off, my remembrance of names is very bad. So I would have to look up his name, I’m sorry.
— That’s quite interesting about Russian improvisers in Zurich.
— Yeah. He’s working with electronics and playing saxophones and also brass instruments. And he does a very noisy music, very energetic also which I really appreciated when I was listening to it. So it’s more… And that’s I think he’s not the only one. I think there is quite a scene in Russia that goes into this very noisy and also loud kind of music.
— Yes, sure.
— And “b-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!” — like that, high energy, loud and noise bands. I think there is happening a lot of interesting stuff. Of course it doesn’t happen only in Russia, it happens…
— Yeah, everywhere.
— Also in Asia you find a lot of them and it happens in the US also. There is a network all over the world of this young noise musicians. And actually they have also a tradition, maybe they don’t know it. But in the early 1980s it started already. In the US and also in Europe there were the first loud noise bands. So there is a strong scene in this direction. But there is also I think a scene in the other direction of finding very soft and very differentiated sounds. What considers me personally, in relation to both I must say I’m interested in both. So yeah, I really like the very fine structured improvised music as I also like to play in a louder and noisy context. So I can appreciate both.
— Actually I think there is also line of improvisational music in Russia which do quite and very… Opposed of dance, I can’t remember the word. Quite free music, we have not so many sounds, they are not so loud and it’s more like creating situations and the atmosphere than harsh noise bands. We have also at least one improvisation orchestra in Saint-Petersburg, I don’t know if you’ve heard about them. But anyway, yes.
— Yeah. I mean another one I met is Daniil Gorokhov. He’s a trombone player. Actually he studied in Basel and we met there. I mean he’s a great player of contemporary music and a fantastic improviser. I think he’s based in Petersburg now.
— The name I didn’t hear of him. So in the interview for the Swiss music prize nomination, it’s on YouTube, you said something about… Can’t remember the exact quotation, but about that you do kind of marginal music, yes? So how do you feel yourself as a figure into the mainstream or out of mainstream? And do Swiss academic music have a mainstream and if yes, what is it?
— Difficult to say. Because in Switzerland there are so many different movements. And I mean it’s not only in Switzerland, it’s all over the world. So there are... We’re living actually in a very interesting time because we are allowed to do everything. And the important thing is that you also know that you have to do it yourself now, you can’t rely anymore on schools or on rules or on anything. You really invent your way yourself. And maybe marginal in this sense that the audience is not very big for this kind of music. Especially improvised music. Maybe in composed music a little bit bigger but not really. But the important thing is that the scene is very alive and that thousands of different things happen at the same time. And I personally enjoy that a lot. So this has also to do with heterogeneity.
— Yes, you said so.
— I really like extremely different kinds of music. I can enjoy listening to heavy metal music as I can to hardcore free improv, as I can to jazz, as I can to Japanese Noh theater, as I can to a rap improviser, on the lute, oud and so on. Or an African drum orchestra or whatever. So I can enjoy a lot of music. And all of this music can refresh my thinking. It doesn’t mean that I have to take it and make it my own, not at all. I mean, listening to music also always means listening with respect for what all these people created. And listening with respect doesn’t mean “I’m composer, I can take it and I can destroy it.”
— But why not? There’s a kind of compositional strategy, one of. So maybe the last question, I’m not sure if I should ask it. Because I run out of time. When were the time when you understood, “Yes, that’s it, I’m a composer”? At which time it was?
— At which time? Actually I can nearly date it. It was in 1984. Although I was already a composer then and an improviser. And yeah. At the age of 29 already I was composing, I was improvising. And then I had a grant to go to Paris. I could live for half a year in Paris and I could really work there. And there I started to compose bigger pieces than before. And suddenly I felt, “Yes, that’s it, that’s what I do. Now I’m a composer.” So I had to become quite old to be sure of that.
— Actually that’s inspiring story. Thank you very much, it was very interesting for me, I hope also for the readers or listeners. And have a good time, have good new projects. Probably we can stop here or maybe speak about something else.
— Yeah, thank you so much for your very interesting and inspiring questions. And I would like to go on now for another hour but then I would like to ask questions to you as a colleague. To know more about what you do and about your music and I would love to listen to examples of your music. We can make a dialogue.
— We can chat. Through Miroslava I can send something to you. But maybe that stops interview and we can just have conversation after it. Actually I don’t know what to tell about myself. For the recent years I did less compositional projects and more about speaking about music, writing about music, managing ensemble, when we do some improvisations or some… We play some minimalist music, we play jazz, we play different things from Stockhausen to Terry Riley. And that occupied me for five years already. We began in 2016 and that’s the first kind of such ensemble of contemporary music in my home town. Because in Russia we have quite different situation. We have big cities, not 20.000 but about a million in Rostov-on-Don. But not so reach cultural life unfortunately. So we need to invent or to make a foundation of almost everything. Because if you want to improvise we need to start and to improvise. Because we can’t go to concert with improvised music because there is nothing. Almost nothing, of course. So I think… Of course we have Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, two Russian capitals where cultural life is much bigger and much wider. But in other cities many times there are quite less options and we create these options right now. We are the first generations to do it. I’m in contact with musicians from very different stylistical groups, almost with everyone who wants to do something experimental, something different from the usual experience. We collaborate with jazz musicians, sometimes with dancers, sometimes with video artists and with electronic ambient musicians and so on. So that’s I can say that’s kind of islands inside one city. And now we try to connect these islands through series of bridges and do something bigger through it. My music is very different. From time to time I can write absolutely minimalist music in last year and next year I can write something quite experimental with electronics, also live electronics, with harmonic or textural experiments. It depends on context. In Russia… I think yes, that’s also kind of heterogeneity. But it’s stratified. I think we need more connection between these different musical zones. Connection and interaction, maybe some influences. And when we have it maybe something bigger and something interesting will grow. So that’s my final monologue.
— But actually in your city you’re doing a very important work it seems. I would love to hear it. Do you have recordings?
— I’ll send you something. We have free jazz improvise and soundtracks improvised. Soundtracks with movies like Battleship Potemkin, we did it two times last year and it was actually probably the first experience of this kind in Rostov.
— Yeah, yeah, great.
— Thank you.
— Thank you. So please send me some music.
— Okay, thank you very much.