Earlier this week The Knights with conductor Eric Jacobsen played my piece “Garmoshka” at Zankel Hall (at Carnegie Hall) as part of a program celebrating America’s diverse musical landscape, that also included a beautiful new clarinet concerto by Gabriel Kahane (feat. Anthony McGill), Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”, and shorter pieces by Duke Ellington, Margaret Bonds and Albert Brumley…. I posted a few IG stories about this concert – but stories fade too quickly…
There are a few things I want to celebrate — first of all, my dear parents, composer Alexander Zhurbin and poet/vocalist Irena Ginzburg-Zhurbin, artistic legends in their own right, were able to attend a concert at Carnegie where their son’s work was being played as part of the program, and, for the first time, saw my name on a Carnegie billboard. Almost 36 years to the date after our arrival in New York, to be included in a program celebrating the diversity of America is a real honor.
Secondly, the piece — “Garmoshka” was a lead-sheet I sketched out in 2004, at the old Hit Factory Studio (on 54th Street), between takes of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ayre” — I was trying to write something that my grandmother, Ada Zhurbin, would enjoy. At that session, I met the wonderful magician-accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman, and a few weeks later, Michael recorded the accordion tracks for “Garmoshka” in his home studio in London, I recorded an ensemble of violas in New York, and the track, mixed by Alex Kharlamov in Los Angeles, was born. That winter, instead of holiday cards, I sent everyone on my list a hand-burned CD-R of “Garmoshka” as a single, two years before my debut album.
A few years later, as I was arranging Shostakovich’s film-music waltzes for a project that The Knights were collaborating on with the cellist Jan Vogler, I was asked to contribute a waltz of my own. I hastily created an arrangement of “Garmoshka”, virtually overnight, and the Kngihts recorded it for their Sony Classical debut, with Colin Jacobsen and Johnny Gandelsman as the violin soloists.
Over the years, I’ve made different versions of “Garmoshka” — there are maybe four or five orchestrations in my files for different sizes of orchestral forces, as well as a version for cello and piano.
And so, 22 years since inception, this little lead sheet, written for my grandmother at a recording session, has brought together a lot of people. Through the generosity of these people — of Michael, Eric, Johnny, Jan, the producers at Sony, The Knights, and so many others who keep it going.
I’ve written a lot of music since 2004 — but that this little Valentine keeps coming back for an encore — and now its Carnegie premiere — makes me happy and optimistic.
Thank you all!
See you out there,
Ljova
#music #composers #newyork #carnegiehall
and now — some photos:
