Translated material
Taming the "wild"
One day a year, from morning until late at night, concert halls and music museums open their doors to everyone and for free.
One day a year, from morning until late at night, concert halls and music museums open their doors to everyone and for free.
“Good night,” the artists say to the audience as they enter the stage. The Night of Music is being held in Moscow for the second time, and compared to last year, the program has doubled. Last Saturday, about 800 musicians played at 180 venues: classical and jazz, opera and folk choir, excursions, quests and exhibitions, and in addition, young groups for whom a performance is also a chance to find their audience: before the "Night ..." they were selected special jury.
“The first action was a huge success: about 30 percent of the audience came to the concert hall for the first time. We managed to change the places of the audience: those accustomed to the classics suddenly saw jazz in their hall, and they liked it. And lovers of modern music got to the symphony orchestra and were amazed,” says the curator of the Night from the Department of Culture Ekaterina Kalachikova. Some of the events were moved to residential areas, to music schools - in order to organize art within walking distance. The organizers would like the Musical Hall to go beyond the usual classics, to take a broader look at music. “Jukebox performing at a music school is a revolution. They don’t teach this, but it sounds everywhere, and, leaving school, the child finds himself in a completely different sound concert, ”says Kalachikova. She is convinced that professionals work in music schools who are certainly able to distinguish good music from bad, even if it is unusual for them: they will hear, and there will be an incentive to introduce something new into the school curriculum.
DJs arrived at Music School No. 74 in Biryulyovo - they placed their controllers right on the piano. And this is not a one-time master class, but the first lesson: DJing classes will now be held here regularly. True, not in the standard course of the school, but separately, on a paid basis. In fact, classes are designed for adults, out of five courses for children, only one will be. But on the Night of Music, the DJs were mostly surrounded by children. Dmitry Vinokurov, the head of the DJing school, is pleased with this: “Adults have already formed an opinion about everything, and children are open to the future.” He believes that music education should not break away from the present: “Let you be a violinist, but you should be able to work with a DJ. Benji B, the most famous DJ from BBC-1 radio, was looking for local musicians in Russia to perform with a string orchestra - it turned out that we have excellent violinists, but they only know the classics. And you have to be comprehensively developed.”
Children are important guests of the "Night of Music": most of the daytime activities are focused on them. Children enthusiastically learn Brazilian percussion at the entrance to the Museum. M.I. Glinka. Drummers from the Samba Real studio handed out the agogo, the simplest instrument in their arsenal, to everyone - curved tubes that are tapped with a stick. Children from 5 to 10 years old mastered the agogo instantly and already keep the rhythm, and adults, skilled drummers help them, interfering with the children's friendly ringing of hefty leather drums and tambourines. You can quickly master the Brazilian drums - the blonde Tanya has been in the team since May, and she already performs on an equal footing with everyone: “I saw the guys in the spring at the soap bubble festival and realized: this music shakes.” Six-year-olds, it seems, "shake" too.
New people really came to the Glinka Museum. The students were especially happy that everything was free. “We signed up for organ music, and ended up in this amazing place,” says a linguist student Nastya, who I met in the hall of instruments of the peoples of the world, tells me. “I had no idea there were so many tools!” There is a jam session in this hall for three hours in a row: among the museum shelves with ancient instruments, young musicians improvise on the themes of folk tunes of the South, East, West and North: a harp and a DJ console, a guitar and a pipe ... Every now and then the speakers look at each other and smile a little, as if in the music slips the humor understood by him alone. There are so many listeners that there are not enough chairs on display, they sit on pillows right on the floor - this museum hall has never seen or heard of.
"Night of Music" was conceived to sweep away the boundaries of eras and genres, to turn the idea of music. A drummer from another group, who has already performed his own, approaches pianist Yakov Chashnikov for an electric organ, and, listening, begins to tap out the rhythm. Chashnikov smiles, having suddenly received a partner - this is how a duet suddenly turns out of a keyboard solo. Here is a real, acoustic organ today, too, is acquiring a new sound. The organ arouses interest: a huge queue lined up to the hall, and when the doors opened, people rushing to the culture in the crowd almost dropped the cooler. "Gentlemen, keep calm! You are still in the museum of musical culture!” the organizers exhorted. Ekaterina Melnikova's performance is called "Moscow Time", and this is not a concert - a performance. They arrange something amazing with the organ: under her hands, he either sings about time, measures seconds and depicts the rumble of a big city, then suddenly flies away into hoary antiquity - a strange and solemn fragment of Ivan the Terrible’s composition sounds. And then Ekaterina suddenly puts on a long skirt over her trousers, puts on her ankles - jingling bracelets, leaves the organ and begins to dance.
The closer to the Moscow Conservatory, the denser the flow of people on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street - and this is at 11 pm. “Today is an unusual audience,” said the conservatory students Nastya and Zhanna, leaving the Great Hall at half past one in the morning: the conservatory had never opened its doors to the general public so late. “There are few coughing grandmothers in the hall, but there are a lot of young people.” “However, they even sat and listened attentively,” says their friend and also a sophisticated listener, Anya, somewhat surprised. “Although it’s clear that they’re new: they don’t know that you can’t clap in the intervals between works.”
Indeed, deafening applause broke out whenever the music stopped. But it was clear that the audience was genuinely pleased. More advanced listeners knew in advance that it was a rare success to meet the conductor Vladimir Fedoseev, while the violinist Alena Baeva was magnificent. The rest guessed in the process. “I accidentally heard about the Night of Music on the radio at work. I decided to sign up somewhere and signed up, it seems, for the most grandiose event, ”the insurer Ilya told me. The fact that Ilya was not a goer to the conservatory could be determined by the sneakers. He usually listens to Russian rock, but the Night of Music worked exactly as the organizers expected: he decided on something unusual.
The orchestra played Tchaikovsky. Alena Baeva burned. The impressed insurer Ilya dropped his glasses and whispered to me: “Great!” Guys in jeans and sweatshirts with Batman quietly got out of the hall during a break between compositions. When the suite from The Nutcracker was announced, a groan was heard in the hall, and when they finished, half an hour was left before the metro closed, and the audience first hurried to the exit, and then came to their senses ... and gave a grateful ovation. If this happened at a rock concert, they would probably jump with a roar of delight, throwing up their hands ...