The Arkhangelsk Jazz Festival

The second evening was dedicated once again to the memory of Dmitry Pokrovski and 4 members of the Ensemble of National Music of Dimitry Pokrovski performed in the evening concert. They are wonderful musicians with beautiful voices, but as the leader of the ensemble is gone, who will replace him?
This question became obvious, as the elder musician, Danilov, turned the show to a very low level, interrupted the solos of his female collegues with stupid jokes, and killed the spirit. (Can we say that the spirit killed him? Later I found him drunk very often.). As many russian musicians tend to polystylistic music, he, without any sensitivity, later mixed the beautiful russian music, what was the aim of the ensemble, with really stupid jazz and blues citations. Maybe he wanted to profile himself as the new leader of the ensemble and to show the new directions? We felt disappointed and sad.

It is not easy to continue with the heritage. And I think, the ensemble has to find out very soon which way they want to continue.

For sure, Umezu Kazutoki was the first artist, who ever performed together with a Butoh dancer, Motoki Kotchi, in Arkhangelsk. Umezu, one of the leading saxophone players of the jazz world, played to the dance of Motoki, or was it vice versa?

They didn't find one mutual language or expression, and so I had the impression that Butoh was presented just for exotism. There are chances to unite music and dance to a very dense connection, like Tadashi Endo proved very often, but this time, everybody did his work. Alone. Each used the other as a background for his performance.

Umezu, who co-operates with Butoh artists very often, missed the spirit this time.

The second evening was closed by a very surprising performance. Surprising at least for Westerners: Vladimir Resitzky introduced his project with improvising musicians (Vladimir Miller, Vlad Makarov a.o.) and with authentic hair cutters! 2 russian beauties underwent a very intensive hair styling on the stage, while another model got her body painted. Parukmacherskaja Iskustwa (Hairstyling art), Body art and music joined for a breathtaking performance,