Igor Butman: A Jazz Leader for the New Era

Hailed by none other than Bill Clinton as one of the world’s greatest living saxophone players, Igor Butman is an icon of Russian musical life. Born in St Petersburg in 1961, he took up the instrument at 15 with encouragement from his jazz aficionado father, a keen musician who worked by day and gigged by night.

“My father told me about jazz. I hadn’t actually heard much, because I’d been listening mostly to Soviet pop, but my dad was an amateur drummer and singer who often played at weddings and in restaurants,” Butman explains. “He was really the person who got me into jazz music, and music itself.”

Jazz in Russia goes back to the 1920s. According to Butman, it has been through various blurry periods of development, as well as confusion with classical music. The Soviet regime’s strict control of artistic liberty presented both opportunities and challenges: “As soon as I started playing sax, I was able to perform in jazz clubs around St Petersburg. I travelled with different groups to places like Moscow, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine, but I wasn’t allowed to go abroad because they thought I might escape.”

“In Soviet times, the state-owned booking agency would provide you with concerts – it didn’t matter if you sold out or had two people in the audience, they would still get you 14 concerts a month,” says Butman. However, despite supplying a steady stream of work, this closed system placed considerable constraints on creativity. “I put together my own band, but I couldn’t get a job because I wasn’t in the state booking agency. It wasn’t easy to get professional status and be able to travel. So I decided to go to the United States and try the normal way.”

In 1987, Butman arrived in Boston to study at the renowned Berklee College of Music. “I was already the best in the Soviet Union and I knew my limitations,” recalls the saxophonist. “I had to study, play and be in competition with the best in the world. After graduating, I moved to New York for a few years, before coming back to Russia permanently in 1997.”

It was on his return to Moscow that Butman’s career really took off. He began to establish himself as the leading light in Russian jazz, recording several CDs – including his most recent release, Magic Land, which features theme tunes from Soviet cartoons and an elite group of American players.

Russia’s jazz scene today is a far cry from its state in the former USSR, when you could be thrown in jail for holding unauthorised concerts. Butman is quick to acknowledge how “everything has changed,” especially in terms of healthy competition in the musical world. “It’s a harder life for us in a way. There’s a lot of competition between orchestras and groups, which I like. You have to keep improving and really provide something interesting and unique; you have to think about what you can give to venues or concert halls.”

“Now there are a lot more good young musicians. A lot of things are happening all around Russia – every town has its own interesting scene. It’s not only Moscow, but Novosibirsk, St Petersburg, Vladivostok, Rostov-on-Don, Yaroslavl. There are also a lot more jazz clubs competing with each other, and they are able to bring in the best musicians from all over the world.”

The sense of anticipation when a big act hits town is exciting for Butman, who has been organising his own jazz festival for nine years. “It’s called Triumph of Jazz. I’m trying to find new names and give them the opportunity of playing here, as well as bringing old stars who made a revolution in jazz.”

“I think there’s a big market for that in Russia. People are interested in jazz, and they’ve heard about me – a lot of people know me, so they can place trust in what I’m going to play or the people I’m going to bring, even if they don’t know who it is. There’s a big sense of curiosity, because it’s not every day we have something so special. A lot of different people come to the concerts.”

Butman’s status as something of a jazz celebrity in Russia has built up from numerous angles, not least his powerful and distinctive voice on tenor saxophone. In addition to running a club and the Triumph festival, he also hosted the show ‘Jazzophrenia’ on national television.

Most recently, he embarked on an ambitious eight-concert US tour with the Crossover Concerto, a collaboration featuring classical maestro Yuri Bashmet and the composer Igor Raykhelson. “We have my big band and a chamber orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, conducted by Yuri Bashmet. It’s a combination of different music: they play classical pieces, with a little jazz influence, and we play some classical in our jazz way. It’s challenging, but it sounds so good – for us it’s just incredible.”

The current vitality of Russian jazz receives no better endorsement than the fact Butman does not see a reason for returning to America: “I don’t have to live there. Of course I really liked it, but I like to live in Russia just as much.” Habitually sold-out gigs indicate this feeling is mutual.


Published in Russia Now, March 2009, w/ Washington Post (USA) & Daily Telegraph (UK).

In Conversation with Chris Potter

Chris Potter may once have been a favorite among jazz insiders rather than the general public. But high-profile gigs with Herbie Hancock and others, as well as more than a dozen leader dates, have brought him center stage in the jazz world. He talks with Frederick Bernas.

“Music definitely gets to a different place when you’re playing live,” states Chris Potter. The saxophonist sits nonchalantly in the lobby of a London hotel, as conventional Muzak drones ironically in the background. He is due at Ronnie Scott’s club for a gig with Underground, his bass-less quartet that integrates the funkier side of jazz with a strong progressive aesthetic. “This energy thing builds up with the audience and it’s very exciting,” Potter continues, referring to Underground’s Follow The Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard (Sunnyside, 2007), the third live CD he has released.

“When I established this band I was thinking about trying to use some of the influences I hadn’t expressed so explicitly before—like how much time I’ve spent with James Brown and Stevie Wonder, later Miles and the whole funk thing. It also feels like sometimes we get into this real kind of harmolodic Ornette-funk thing. There are a lot of influences that come and go, but I think we’re figuring out how to put them together in our own way, through our own four personalities.”

The project sees Potter joined by Craig Taborn on Fender Rhodes, guitarist Adam Rogers and drummer Nate Smith—a combination he feels is starting to develop very fruitfully. “They’re all really strong musicians; I don’t have to think about whether they’ll be able to play something I’ve written or not, I know they’ll come up with something unique. They all have such interesting backgrounds. Craig’s frame of reference is huge: he’s way into a lot of stuff I don’t know anything about, punk bands and this and that—a completely different world. And I hear that in things he goes for sometimes, he’s able to somehow bring it in. Nate originally started to play in church—you know, gospel—and he’s got this thing when it’s funk, but it’s really warm and easy to play with. It’s not that mechanical machine thing at all, it’s really soulful and pretty mad to mix with Craig. And Adam has so many different ways he can go and so many beautiful sonic things he does with the guitar. He’s amazing at finding some part within the whole matrix of the thing that really makes it come alive, besides playing great solos. And then I try and just not get in the way!”

This faithfully minimalist, open attitude fosters a creative chemistry that manifests itself in all kinds of ways: sparks fly at live shows. For Potter, the group represents an open book of possibilities that help him to “grow” and “figure out” how he can pull together all his strands of thought into a coherent musical statement. “For a while, I made a rule for myself that I wasn’t going to write anything longer than a page for Underground,” he explains. “I’ve since broken that rule, but it’s still that kind of bare minimum of material: just a mood and some ideas to work with, but not too much. I want to hear what they bring into it. If there’s some specific idea I have for a tune and it’s not going in that direction, maybe I’ll say something, but I prefer to say as little as possible. It’s an organic approach, as much as I can do—I don’t want to stifle it.”

Despite heavy demand for Underground (this interview took place at the start of a significant European tour), Potter always finds time to work with a wide variety of other leaders, from Herbie Hancock to Ari Hoenig. With 14 albums under his own name, the saxophonist would be perfectly entitled to follow many of his peers by focusing on personal projects. It’s a complicated situation, a “funny balance,” according to Potter. “I get a lot out of playing with a lot of different people, but it’s a question I ask myself: am I shooting myself in the foot, in a way, by doing too much other stuff? I don’t know exactly what the right answer is, but I can imagine just wanting to be on the road a little less than I have been, because it’s been a lot. But, on the other hand, if somebody calls you for a really good gig, it seems a very strange thing to say no. You know how musicians are, dying for a good gig, wondering if anyone’s ever going to call you—you’ve always got to have that in the back of your mind,” he states modestly.

Furthermore, he is quick to acknowledge lessons learned from sideman experience—starting right back at age 18, when he played hard bop with Charlie Parker’s long-time trumpet partner Red Rodney. “That was a real introduction to what it was like being on the international jazz scene. And it was great playing with someone who’s a master of the bebop language as a real first generation thing. It was really something special to be playing Bird lines with him, knowing he played them with Bird.”

In terms of band leadership, Potter talks about “how to approach music” as being a key facet of what he’s picked up. Major mentors include Paul Motian and Dave Holland: “Everyone has a different approach, like the way Dave Holland is. He has a very methodical way of working through ideas, which has been very influential to me. But on the other side, working a lot with Paul Motian has been useful as a completely opposite thing: as un-analytical as possible. Freedom. Just going with your aesthetic instinct and not at all thinking about whether you’re painting inside the lines or not. So, between those extremes, and a lot of other people too, I feel it’s been very useful for my overall approach to music and leading bands.”

Both these musical ideologies prevail in Potter’s recent work. As well as ongoing development of the freewheeling Underground, his 2007 release Song For Anyone (Sunnyside) features a series of compositions for “tentet”—a group including instruments not normally seen in a jazz context, such as strings. “That was something I’d been wanting to do for years and years,” he explains. “I never really studied that much composition in college, definitely not orchestration. It was a little bit like I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I just went for it anyway. It was so exciting for me to hear real people playing it and hear it actually come true, it makes me want to do more someday. I haven’t yet, but when I listen to that record I think ‘how did I manage to get all that work done?’ It was a way for me to explore a new compositional side.”

Making the album also planted the idea of ‘spontaneous composition’ in Potter’s mind. It entails a slightly refined, contextualised approach to traditional improvisation, as he was required to view solos as only one part of a broader written structure—rather than a separate entity existing of its own accord. “I think I improved as an improviser by thinking about the composition from start to finish, not just improvisation that goes somewhere on its own. I had to think about it beforehand, and have a chance to plan what’s going to go where, lead to what, and when. It helped me think more compositionally as an improviser.”

Another knock-on effect has been fresh interest in “spontaneous group composition,” an idea he has been exploring with Underground. “I’ve been thinking about my role in that kind of situation—how to add what’s necessary and get out of the way when it’s not necessary. It’s a tricky thing.” How free? “It doesn’t matter if it has a form or not, we’re still trying to be as free with it as we can—whatever that means. Even when it’s within a certain set of guidelines, the feeling that it’s creative and growing comes from the freedom. Maybe choosing to play the written material sometimes, and judiciously choosing when to go away from that, doesn’t make it seem any less free than completely free playing.”

Potter’s album Gratitude (Verve, 2001) saw the saxophonist pay eloquent tributes to his key inspirators on the instrument—Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Eddie Harris and Ornette Coleman included. When asked which of his own contemporaries Potter draws on, he spoke of a mutual cross-pollination they all use to raise the bar. “I really enjoy David Binney, the writing especially. Also Mark Turner, Chris Cheek, Seamus Blake, Josh Redman, whoever’s at a high level. But it’s funny, I think it’s just a different feeling we all tend to have about people who are from our same generation versus people who are older. We’re all looking up to Wayne [Shorter] and whoever and thinking ‘wow’—you know, he just doesn’t seem human! But I think it’s just a natural thing, a generational thing. In some way, I feel like with all the other saxophone players of my age it’s more like trading ideas back and forth a little bit. I think we all influence each other, or at least they influence me!”

This reflects the rich unity of New York’s contemporary scene, which is becoming increasingly vital amidst the music industry’s apparent impending doom. As major record labels are forced to downscale or completely abandon jazz-related activities, little collectives of like-minded artists are coming to the fore—think Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf Music or John Zorn’s flourishing Tsadik imprint. The trend has made its way overseas: budding independent operations are rising in London, with musicians eager to work together and spread a shared message. Potter asserts that, of course, “we just want to make music, not spend time on all that admin stuff,” but also understands that “most people are accepting they have to do a bit of both, especially when they’re starting off.”

His vision for the future (he’s still a thirty-something) sits on the principle of a perpetually open mind: “What any artist is ultimately trying to do is express their view of life and what it feels like to be alive. I definitely want to approach music in a way that, until the end of my life, it will be growing, and I’ll still be growing—I hope I’ll be open enough to react to what’s happening and smart enough to recognise something good when I see it or avoid something bad when I see it. That day-to-day search for inspiration isn’t even really a search, it’s just recognising it when it happens.”

With an Underground studio album freshly recorded, a customarily busy gig schedule and a collaboration featuring Dave Holland, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Eric Harland in the pipeline, 2009 looks like it will be another good one for Chris Potter. Speaking again of the Underground band, he is clearly enthused: “I feel that now it’s starting to find its own language, which is exciting for me to be part of. It keeps getting better and better.” Long may this continue.


Published @ jazz.com, 23/3/09 - click here for original.

Got couch?

Moscow. Tuesday night. Tiki Bar. A large group of people talking and mingling: nomads, students, businessfolk and a few token randomers who don’t really know where they are. Nothing unusual about that – unless you remember many of them had never met in person, but convened online via www.couchsurfing.com.

What is it?

CouchSurfing was set up by a group of four friends in 2003. Their goal was to cultivate international dialogue by creating an open hospitality network in the name of cross-cultural understanding, with free accommodation an added bonus. Six years later, membership has swelled to nearly one million people, and you can find couches to surf the world over – from Baghdad to Birmingham, Caracas to Cape Town.

“I’d often find myself in some strange city, longing for cool people to hang out with,” writes founder Casey Fenton on the site. “I knew there were interesting people, all around me, with stories to tell. I’d wish there was a better way of making contact with these folks.” In January 2004, the project came to life with a global launch.

Local mix

Russia’s first CS members joined soon after, but the idea didn’t really take off for another couple of years. Now there are more than 8,500. The Moscow community, like many other city-based groups, is close-knit yet devoutly open-minded and welcoming. “Having come to Moscow by myself, and not having any family or friends here, CS has allowed me to learn about and explore my new home with a really versatile group of people,” says Diana Agazatian, 26, from the U.S.

“From what I can see, Moscow may be one of the best CS-represented cities in the world. It has one of the largest numbers of active members, who actually participate in the weekly activities available,” Diana continues. A quick glance at the CS Moscow group’s online forum will show you exactly what she means: new posts spring up on a daily basis, with myriad possibilities on offer.

In addition to the weekly gatherings at Tiki Bar, there are clubbing excursions, film nights, polyglot language meetings, dacha weekend getaways, visits to other cities and all kinds of other parties and social shindigs – including the now legendary Sunday sessions. And you never know who’s going to turn up: oily expat sugar daddies, the smooth-jazz-loving Russian chap who pretends to be British, or, if you’re lucky, an anarcho-hippie priest from the Brezhnev era.

Monastic madness

That’s right – no errors here. He doesn’t come to many meetings, but one of CS Moscow’s mythical figures is a fellow named Father Sergey. His Orthodox living community in the city centre became an unlikely hub for visiting travellers; in exchange for a small role in daily tasks, they received warm hospitality on a purely non-denominational basis. “It was a unique experience, an oasis of real life in the temple of materialism that is Moscow,” said Stefano Puccio, one of more than 60 people who stayed at the monastery.

Due to the church’s more traditional activities, the project is currently on hold. But fear not: there is talk of a restoration for Moscow’s likely summer influx of curious CouchSurfers.

What next?

Closely affiliated with Hospitality Club, another online project of similar nature, CouchSurfing is a modern offshoot of the wanderlust travel ethos that began with the ancient art of hitchhiking – itself the focal point of a flourishing underground subculture across Russia. With a website relaunch lined up to celebrate the million-member milestone, a voluntary management team operating from San Francisco and a massive pool of willing participants, the CS cult looks destined to grow and grow.

“The next step is to develop Russian city-to-city connections, so travellers can build their agenda through a network, as well as more international gatherings,” says Dmitry Sivenkov, a Moscow CS Ambassador. “I think the project is going to keep expanding – in another couple of years, hopefully we will have another million!”


Essential elements
• First of all, hit www.couchsurfing.com and sign up to create a profile. Once you’re done with the membership formalities, get to work on filling out your page and adding some traditionally daft photos.
• After this initial stage, why not get a few mates to join too and leave references for each other? This is a simple, self-sustainable security process for CouchSurfers, which performs the obvious function of making sure people are who they say they are. A couple of solid references mean you’ll be far more likely to receive couch requests, or pick up accommodation when you need it.
• Check out the ‘Groups’ section of the site, where you can find forums dedicated to all the obvious topics and more. The Moscow community is always busy – feel free to introduce yourself, post threads with any questions or see what activities are going on.


Published in element, 5/3/09.

Not-So-Modest Mussorgsky in Moscow

Jazz.com tries to cover the whole world of jazz, and not just the famous players at the name clubs. This is more than a quest for brotherhood and goodwill, but also driven by a realization that some of today’s most exciting developments are happening outside the US, especially when talented artists mix the jazz sensibility with the best of their local or regional musical culture.

Frederick Bernas, who covers the Moscow jazz scene for us, finds just this in a performance by Alex Rostotsky at the V & J Club in central Moscow. Here Rostotsky, a hot electric bassist in a Jaco mold, takes on the music of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). Rostotsky's new CD is still a rare item in the West, but you are encouraged to check out the video here, even if your Russian is rusty.
Ted Gioia [editor]

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Jazz and classical music enjoy an unpredictably tempestuous relationship: polar opposites in one sense, yet drawing ever closer in another. The very act of improvisation is alien to many classical players, but jazz musicians often receive a dual upbringing. Contemporary jazz in particular has seen frequent blurring of genre boundaries between the two, with people including Wayne Shorter, Chris Potter, Jacques Loussier and Uri Caine experimentally combining elements of both and compositional techniques growing ever more sophisticated.

Russia is no exception to this rising trend. With its magnificent classical history and fertile developing jazz scene, perhaps that’s no surprise—but it is nevertheless slightly unusual that one of the leading advocates is Alex Rostotsky, an electric bassist who favours a distinctly Jaco-esque fretless fusion sound.

On February 28, Rostotsky presented his new album Pictures at an Exhibition or Promenade with Mussorgsky at the recently opened V & J Club in central Moscow. As the title would suggest, it features jazz interpretations of some of the great Russian composer’s most famous works; Rostotsky is aided by pianist Yakov Okun and Alexander Mashin on drums, with a grand finale featuring the Russian State Symphony Orchestra and original music by Alexander Rosenblatt. An optional DVD to accompany the CD gives a fascinating insight into the making of the final track, a 16-minute sweeping epic that ebbs and flows through the full emotional continuum.

“The music of Mussorgsky is so strong that it invites interpretations and assimilations in other genres,” said Rostotsky in an interview with jazz.ru, Russia’s leading jazz magazine. “Maybe this was the first composition in Russian musical history for jazz trio and symphony orchestra. I dreamt for many years about such an idea. I heard a few seconds of Rosenblatt’s demo recording and immediately understood we had to make the project together.”

The live experience, although lacking an orchestra, nevertheless nearly matched the viscous intensity catalysed by Rosenblatt, Rostotsky and conductor Sergey Skripka in Rosenblatt’s “Concert Fantasia.” The trio’s deft interactions were augmented by Spanish artist Fernando Jimeno Perez, who produced spontaneous sketches to accompany the playing, every stroke projected onto a screen beside the stage. During a couple of quieter moments, the gristly brush of the charcoal even became a musical voice in itself.

“Rich Jew, Poor Jew” sees a klezmer-oriented bass drone slowly build up after Rostotsky’s introduction, before a brief piano interlude and the return of the ostinato and Okun’s harmonically dexterous overlaid solo. He has inherited something of the mathematical, scientific approach from his father Mikhail, a venerable elder statesman of Russian jazz who performed at the V & J on February 26. Mashin cuts loose for a few rounds between crashing dissonant chords, before settling back down to burn menacingly, eerily scraping his cymbals as the track draws to a close.

Rostotsky’s sustained, humming presence is a feature of the record, like an electric current running through the music as he channels the energy of his counterparts. It adds welcome variety to the standard trio palette—his occasional devious intrusions are worth listening out for beneath Mashin’s busy beats and scampering ideas. A fine example is “The Old Castle,” a 10-minute offering where the rhythm section works together to subtly up the ante for Okun’s ponderous, musing solo that understatedly takes its time to say what he wants to say.

The words ‘Mussorgsky’ and ‘post-bop’ in the same sentence may seem an unlikely marriage of conflicting interests. Some conservatives would splutter at the very thought of such a union. However, there is one essential aspect of human nature which must not be forgotten: opposites attract.


Published @ jazz.com, 4/3/09 - click here for original.