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MP3 Alexey Kruglov - Music of Anxiety

One of the best new-generation Russian saxophone players. Winner of several jazz prizes, including the prestigious ''Triumph'' prize.

3 MP3 Songs in this album (43:56) !
Related styles: JAZZ: Contemporary Jazz, JAZZ: Modern Free Jazz

People who are interested in Charlie Parker Gato Barbieri Ornette Coleman should consider this download.


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Until recently it was thought that there was no new jazz in Moscow. But as soon as Alexey Kruglov took part in two international jazz competitions, everyone became aware of the fact that the jazz map of Russia has drastically changed.
Alexey Kruglov was born not far from Moscow in 1979, started learning piano in a music school. Later he studied at Sergei Kazarnovsky’s “Class-centre” where people take children’s and youth’s creative work seriously. He was taught improvization by Arkady Shilkloper.
It was Yury Saulsky who supported Alexey Kruglov’s desire to compose music. As a result, one of his compositions “Song – 494+I” won a special prize at the mini-festival in “The Blue Bird” jazz club. The composition was written when the young saxophone player studied at the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music. Later he won the first place at the international jazz competition in Riga and participated in the jazz festival in Rostov-na-Donu.
The year 2000 was especially successful for Alexey Kruglov: he took part in the Hermitage jazz festival, in the festival devoted to the memory of Willis Conover. He played with Gary Bartz in Moscow, twice took part in the multi-media performance “Fontana Re(Mix)” after John Cage at the “Alternativa” festival.
And last but not least he won the title “the Hope of the Year” by Moscow Jazz Journalists Association “Jazz’ Ear – 2000” after having performed with famous Russian musicians and composers Alex Rostotsky, Vladimir Chekasin and Yury Markin, with the poet Andrei Voznesensky and film-director Aleksander Mitta. Alexey Kruglov composed the score for the film “The Young Lady and the Hooligan.”


Music of Anxiety is the third album of Alexey Kruglov and his «Krugly band». This new album is released on SoLyd Records - the same label that took the risk with their 2002 album, Transfiguration.

Kruglov is a musician-poet not just because he writes verse. (He created a concert program, based on his own material in various poetic styles, called Ornettocolemaniada in honour of Ornette Coleman). Kruglov is a poet in the sense that Albert Schweitzer refers to when he compares Bach and Wagner. Schweitzer refers to Bach as the “musician-painter”, and to Wagner – as the “musician-poet”. Bach, according to Schweitzer, represents an idea statically, while Wagner depicts it in a formation and development.

The three tracks in the new album suggest three different directions. Three stages of searching, if you like, by Alexey Kruglov: Waltz for you is a work within the framework of jazz tradition; Love is improvisational; and the title track Music of anxiety is an attempt to represent solely by means of sounds a musical and theatrical conception by Alexey Kruglov himself, where sounds and words make different connections – from interflow to counterpoint.

This is already the second recorded version of the hit Waltz for you by the «Krugly band» (the first is available on the Transfiguration album). It still has an idiom (the one the theorists refer to as a “dominant chord”) usual for bebop harmonic, but in this version it has two endings, first in a minor key and then in a major one. In the manner of Eric Dolphy, an expressive alto saxophone solo is contrasting with a genre accompaniment, an austere grand piano solo from Dimitry Bratuhin and a final double-bass cadence, performed by Philip Mescheryakov. A coda then follows and suddenly the clarinet and the leader’s saxophone solo sound together.

Love is definitely written in a «new jazz» style. The piece starts with an intriguing double-bass cadence in the highest register by Grigory Voskoboynikov. We can hear how the audience bursts in cheers of admiration after the first sounds of music, though the upcoming theme is still uncertain. The theme is making wide leaps and has an asymmetrical building very typical for Thelonious Monk. There is no regular beat, so at first it is difficult to guess that it also has the waltz three-four meter and actually is a waltz. But a noticeable difference of Love from a usual jazz lyric (ballad genre) is in that special tensed saxophone timbre. This technique was brought from Gospels and early rhythm and blues by Albert Ayler, and after his death raised to fame by tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri. And again, the leader’s solo is emphasized with quite a “decorous” solo from Nikolay Sizov, performed in a romantically-virtuous manner that is a must for the ballad genre.

The third track Music of anxiety takes the central place in the disc, both because of its «conception» core and its scale. Mayakovsky (to whom Kruglov dedicated his second album I love) added musical notes to his poem War and the World. The line, saying: «Dear Lord, may the soul of Your servant stay in Christ» appears already in a grand piano introduction with minor «tone – half tone» intonation by Renat Gataulin. The gradual movement of the leading theme (or better to say, upward movement, but within the vocal octave borders) mostly remains the sacred music structure. And the secondary theme shows: swing, the dancing fever before the II World War, pop music of the 21-st century, which is almost rhythm and blues and may be even hip-hop of the mass media – representing all these as sketches of the contemporary «war» and «the world». The basic feature of sonata allegro is opposition and interaction of the main and second themes. The main theme of «Krugly band» can also appear during the culmination – before and after the drums’ solo from Evgenyi Anoyev – as a hint at so-called reflecting reprise, when everything ends up with the main theme, which is the same sacred music.

Dmitry Ukhov
(translated by Tanya Sokolova)

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