There has never been an album quite like this before in the
annals of recorded jazz.
The very existence of Soviet jazz, of artists who could play
it or write it, was virtually unknown outside the USSR until
1959. That was the year when two intrepid Americans named
Dwike Mitchell and Willie Ruff, in the guise of Yale choral
group members, entered the Soviet Union and let it be bruited
around that they were really jazz musicians. The resultant im-
promptu concerts led them to discover that a cadre of young
musicians existed whose interest in the American jazz ed
bolstered by Voice of America broadcasts, was as deep and in-
tense as their feeling for the music.
Three years later, on a more official and far more broadly
publicized basis, Benny Goodman’s band, the first American
jazz orchestra of modem times to play the Soviet Union (under
U.S. State Department auspices) opened May 30, 1962, at the
Central Army Sports Arena in Moscow. On this tour the bril-
liant and versatile Victor Feldman played vibraphone in the
small combo numbers; and most valuably, during the six weeks
of the tour, he gained a fairly broad picture of the musical life
of the Russians, the Georgians and athe citizens of this endless
fai
I was lucky enough to be in Moscow for the opening, and
later to pat a little time in Leningrad, At a press conference
I heard much talk of arranging for Teal jazzmen to sit in with
Goodman and show him some of their music. The plans failed
to materialize however, for B.G. never sought out tess Soviet
youths whose music amazed those of us wi did get together
with them. And aside from token gestures such as the use of a
couple of Soviet pop songs, there was no acknowledgement in
eta oeteranitthat such anhenomiedion. ax Soviet jaz
‘The aims of Victor Feldman’s LP are, first, to compensate for
this omission; second, to provide a program of modem jazz by
superior soloists with plenty of blowing room; third, to point
up the similarities, rather than the differences, that can_be
found in a comparison of jazz composition as it is conceived in
Moscow, Tblisi or Leningrad vis-’-vis New York, Chicago or
Los Angeles.
Soon after arriving in Moscow, we found out that home-
grown jazz, supposedly tabu in the USSR, not only wasn’t
underground or outlawed as had long been believed, but was
aay flourishing on a modest scale. It even had young, grow-
ing outlets at a Moscow Jazz Club, where students earnestly
discuss the latest news about John Coltrane or Omette Cole-
man, and at a couple of Youth Cafés, where music by the new
Soviet jazz wave is often heard live.
Writing in Down Beat about a visit to the Café Aelita, I ob-
served: “It is is the closest Moscow comes to a night club. . .
Copyright ©1963 by AVA Records
serves only wine, closes at 11 p.m., and is decorated in a style
that might be called Shoddy Modern, though radical by Mos-
cow standards . . . the shocker was the trumpet player, Andre
Towmosian, who is 19 but looks 14, plays with ihe maturity of
a long-schooled musician, though in jazz he is self-taught.
I learned that Towmosian was acclaimed in the fourth annual
jazz festival at Tartu, Estonia. (It was amazing enough to learn
that there had been any Soviet jazz festival, let alone four.)
He was also featured with his quartet at the Leningrad Uni-
versity Jazz Festival; and one of the souvenirs I brought home
was a tape, given me in Leningrad, of Towmosian playing
Ritual, the original heard in this album,
Also on tape were some of the compositions of Gennadi
(Charlie) Golstain, the alto saxophonist and arranger whose
apartment I visited in Leningrad. Though nicknamed for Char-
lie Parker, clearly he has at least two other idols, for side by
side on the wall of his iiving room I noticed adjacent photo-
ie of two men: Nitolai Lenin and Julian (Cannonball)
Adderley.
Golstain’s tapes featu-ed him with a combo similar to the
Feldman group on these sides, but he works regularly with a
large modern orchestra headed by Yusef Weinstain and writes
most of the band’s book. He is a soloist of considerable passion,
as yet uncompletely disciplined and subject to multiple influ-
ences, but his dedication is beyond cavil and his writing shows
an intelligent ao of the right influences.
“Several of the fellows in Benny's band jammed a couple of
times with Gennadi at our hotel, the Astoria in Leningrad,”
Victor recalls, “and some of us, including Phil Woods, played
with him at the University. He was eager for knowledge and
information, like so many of the musicians we met.”
Goldstain is the composer of three of the lines in this set —
Blue Church Blues, Madrigal, and Gennadi — as well as the ar-
ranger, or virtual recomposer, of the folk song Polyushko Polye.
(For those curious about the first title, it should be pointed out
that the church Gennadi had in mind was not Russian Orthodox
but probably Southern Baptist.)
fale represented here is a young arranging student named
Givi Gachechiladze, the composer of “Vic.” “He lives in Kiev,”
says Victor, “but he’s studying at Tblisi (Tiflis); and when we
arrived at the airport there, he and a group of his friends were
at the airport to meet us — with flowers, The next day he gave
me this tune, dedicated to me and named for me.”
‘The rapport that grew between the Soviet musicians and the
Goodman sidemen showed in microcosm the kind of amity
that could exist on all social levels if meetings were possible be-
tween men and women of the two countries who have common
interests. All of us who tasted the hospitality of these devoted
jazz musicians and students were touched 1s their sincerity,
their lack of political animosity (many seemed totally apoliti-
cal), and their obvious desire to discuss things shared rather
than differences.
The young musicians like Towmosian, Golstain, Constantin
Nosov, and Gachechiladze, none beyond their 20s and ey, in
their teens, have not yet earned substantial recognition in their
own country. It is ironic that this is the first ct featuring
Soviet jazz compositions that has ever been recorded, not mere-
ly in the U.S.A., but anywhere in the world. For decades Amer-
ican jazz was a prophet unhonored at home; Europeans were
the first to give it profound critical attention, Now, in a strange
reversal, Americans are the first to draw attention to a set of
swinging, unpretentious Soviet jazz. pieces that are still waiting
to be recorded on home ground.
The group selected for these two sessions is in itself a further
reflection of the “United Notions” character of jazz. Here are
the works of writers in the Soviet Union, performed in America
by a group under the leadership of Victor Stanley Feldman,
who came to this country in 1955, at the age of 21, from his
native London (the natal city also of this writer, who helped
organize the sessions) ; and on the tracks that feature Feldman’s
a the piano is taken over by Joe Zawinul, a superb modern
pianist who was born in Vienna and did not arrive here until
1959. Zawinul works regularly with the sextet of Cannonball,
whose brother Nat is heard on three tracks (Ritual, Madrigal,
Blue Church Blues.)
Harold Land and Herb Ellis, both from Texas, and Carmel
Jones of Kansas are well known to the Soviet insiders, as are
drummer Frank Butler from Kansas City and the Utah-born
bassist Bob Whitlock.
Certaiily these sides, because of the historic precedent th
set, and because of the esteem in which Feldman and his ae
leagues are held in what used to be thought of as the borshch-
and-balalaika belt, will be among the most desirable collectors’
items when the first ae reach the Soviet Union. For listeners
in this country it is to be hoped that they will help reinforce a
concept not of the fea ropes atiaaoeris cliché, but the
unifying image of this music gathering strength and growing
in stature as part of a single world.
—LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The New Encyclopedia of Jazz)
“roduced by LEONARD FEATHER
Audio Engineer: “BONES” HOWE
Cover Photograph: WILLIAM CLAXTON
Recorded at United Recording Studios, Hollywood, California
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