Igor Butman. The time for experimentation is over

And woe is Butman - one of the most famous jazzmen in Russia, saxophonist, graduate of Berkeley College, founder of Le Club.

Russian Magazine: In your opinion, are there few or many jazz festivals now?

Igor Butman: You see, I love this music, and I love when a big hall gathers. A large hall can accommodate several artists. This is such a common practice when a musician, for example, invites his friends and they perform together. These turn out to be festival concerts. And there aren’t that many festivals, just: Triumph of Jazz, Parliament Jazz, Bohemia Jazz, Jazz in the Hermitage Garden - if we talk about the big ones. And they are all quite different, designed for different audiences.

RJ: In our country, at first they didn’t let us listen to jazz; during the perestroika years there was no time for that; In fact, jazz began to sound properly only recently. How accustomed is our audience to jazz, to what extent can they listen to it?

I.B.: The public wants to listen to jazz, I’m sure. It is very difficult to assemble a large hall such as Rossiya. It costs some money, among other things. And the hall was full on these festival days. The public is understanding and subtle. Everyone received their musical education in one way or another - some in educational institutions, others simply by listening to jazz or collecting records.

RJ: To what extent do you have to adapt and popularize the material?

I.B.: I call those musicians whom, firstly, I myself love and who are able to interest our audience. To be honest, I am not particularly attached to those forms of jazz that are usually called experimental. For example, it seems to me that the time for experimentation has already passed. Here is Arkasha Shilkloper... I have sympathy for him, he is a musician of the highest level, but he himself does not call what he does jazz, it is balancing on the brink of different directions, sometimes combining with ethnicity. But he is the best option. And the theatricality and all sorts of tricks... all this is sometimes far-fetched and weak. There is something else, something that is more important to me than unusualness and all sorts of shows - there is quality and charm. The truth of jazz.

Then - I apologize to those who are puritanical, but we have a commercial project. We need to justify the event. We can't do charity. We cannot bring even a great, say, experimental musician if we know that he will not gather people. Such performers find their platforms and their audience. There is a cultural center DOM, there is a Central House of Artists. We have different audiences and different performers. We don't interfere with each other, that's normal. If we invite musicians, we need to pay them. Five to six people will come to experiment. A huge hall will gather for a slightly lighter genre. Yesterday at Gino Vanelli's concert, someone began to leave at the end - yes, for some this is not jazz. But on the other hand, there were a huge number of Vanelli fans who came especially for him.

Joe Locke, Evgeny Maslov, Freddie Cole, the same Vanelli - I don’t think that this is such a simplified adapted music. Or at the Parliament Jazz festival David Sanborn, George Duke, Al Jarreau played. Pop artists? To some extent - of course! But what is the quality of their performance, what magnificent musicians they are.

RJ: You started talking about different audiences at different festivals.

I.B.: Yes, of course, there are tasks for one festival, and there are tasks for another. In the Hermitage Garden I experiment all the time; I once played a program that the big band and I had not rehearsed. There’s also this point, I’ll be completely honest: not everything can be played by our orchestra... Some experimental things don’t work, some things we probably haven’t grown up to yet. Sometimes you lack the skill to experiment. And there are festivals that are more massive. We need to make sure that people walk, we need to somehow accustom people! Jazz shouldn’t be such a scarecrow, as you know, in its time - if you say to a girl: “Let’s go, let’s listen to jazz,” then that’s all, consider it - the acquaintance is over. Now people are interested in jazz and perceive it much more favorably.

RJ: How do you bring musicians? It is clear that if these are your friends and former classmates, they are going at your invitation willingly. How open are those jazzmen with whom you are not personally acquainted?

I.B.: Now I invite many musicians whom I don’t know personally. Some tradition has already developed. We have become a different country, and the charm and some exoticism of Russia - it attracts! So, for example, I really wanted to go to India, and I am terribly glad that I succeeded. And the musicians come, we look for opportunities and pay them their usual fees, and they get a wonderful audience - sensitive, receptive. Russia has the best audience - haven't you heard this before?

The conversation was moderated by Anna Nemzer