The end of the year! 2019: nine albums of Russian jazz from the editor of Jazz.ru
Yes, this is the debut album of a young musician from Moscow. Yes, this is a definite advance to his talent. And yes, in general, this is not an ordinary debut album. An entire team of famous musicians from Russia, the USA and Europe worked on the recording under the sonorous name “Beasts of Jazz” – the first that the alto saxophonist Makar Kashitsyn released under his name .
At the time of the release of the album on the progressive St. Petersburg label Rainy Days, the leader was 19 years old, and he studied in New York in the third year of Manhattan School of Music . The material was recorded in August 2018 in Moscow, the producer was drummer Sasha Mashin , and among the participants were the New York trumpeter Josh Evans, who was gaining popularity, and Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, an outstanding new generation American tenor saxophonist . In addition, the young Moscow guitarist Alexei Polubabkin participated in the recording , the voice of the Dutch vocalist Hiske Osterwijk sounded in two tracks(she also wrote the text for the final track of the album), and the rhythm section was composed by the producer of the album, Sasha Mashin on drums, Makar Novikov on double bass and venerable Alexei Podymkin on the piano and electric piano.
We hear on the album a powerful, vibrant ensemble in which the 19-year-old leader’s alto saxophone sounds along with the tenor and trumpet of his New York colleagues and surprises not only with the technical perfection of performance, but also with deep composer’s thinking, and the sophisticated work of the Russian rhythm section links this whole international into an exciting stream of modern jazz, invented and played at the most advanced level. No wonder Rainy Days label has been participating for the second year in a row at the Jazzahead European Jazz Fair !in Bremen (Germany), declares that his task is “to change the perception of contemporary Russian music in a global perspective” and “to nurture the unique international projects of the best musicians that Russia can offer the world.” This is just such a project. To the eternal Main Question of domestic jazz – “can we, like the Americans” – have long received a generally positive answer. It remained to find out why . And Makar Kashitsyn’s debut album offers not the only, but rather convincing answer: then, in order to stop proving something to someone, stop competing with someone (and, as a rule, someone imagined) and finally start working on a single world jazz scene in its own voice.