Football’s red armies are growing stronger
On any Premiership match day in pubs and homes around the UK, football fans of all creeds gather to drink, socialise and cheer on their favoured club. The majority of teams have a strictly local following, while others – generally the most successful sides like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea – possess a nationwide...
The Price of Indifference
Russia’s Young Are Too Focused on Attaining Material Well-Being to Partake in Human Rights Activism On a grey, dreary Monday evening in Moscow, pre-autumnal rain dully patters down as a group of human rights supporters convene to solemnly remember a champion of their cause. Activist and lawyer Natalia Estemirova’s body was found in the Republic...
Le Cool Moscow – July/August
Afisha Picnic Kolomenskiy Park, 8/8/09 The cult British ska-pop combo Madness will take to a Moscow stage for the first time in their checkered 33-year history. Headlining the capital’s biggest summer festival will be no daunting task for a group which spent over 200 weeks on the UK singles charts between 1980-86, now reunited and...
Hot New Jazz CDs from the UK
Led Bib – Sensible Shoes If London’s “maverick avant-jazz skronkers” Led Bib were a politician, they’d put John McCain to shame. But it’s not just skronkadelic mania and wall-to-wall noise: this twin-sax-led quintet presents a thorough exercise in structured collective improvisation, which traverses mood and dynamic with a delicacy that belies the fierce, free energy...
A Cappella Group Jukebox Make Good on Own
Like all popular music groups, the Jukebox Trio has its own successful formula. Presenting a rich mix of classic covers and original material in an open, friendly, accessible style – with two singers and a human beatbox – it’s hard not to enjoy the experience of seeing them play. “I don’t know any other a...
Brazilian culture at a high temperature in Russia
A close circle of people is singing and chanting under Pushkinsky Most early Sunday evening. In the centre, two at a time duck, dive, feint and sway in hypnotising fashion, while enchanting vocal drones, drums and bow-like berimbaus provide the perfect musical accompaniment. It’s a weekly gathering of Moscow’s capoeira enthusiasts, disciples of the Afro-Brazilian...
Get ready for a feast of Pushkin’s genius
The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin is a man of unparalleled influence on his country’s national literature. Since 2003, his popularity has been reflected by the ever-more ambitious Pushkin in Britain Festival in London, an event aiming to “bring the beat of the Russian heart to the UK”. The seventh annual international festival of Russian poetry...
Earth Patriot
RUSSIA NOW: “I always wanted to be a cosmonaut,” states Fyodor Yurchikhin without hesitation. “When I was a small boy, I jumped from a second floor balcony because I thought I was Gagarin.”
Moscow: the new home of jazz
From hard bop to the new school, jazz has found a haven in post-communist Russia. Moscow’s jazz scene is a creature of many faces. Take the comical shenanigans of one big band in a dive of an expat bar, with all members clad in matching mustard-yellow tassled jackets and an old hippy guitarist who looks...
The Blogs: Barriers to national progress
Corruption, bureaucracy and economic development are under discussion in the English-language blogosphere. Businessman Kendrick White’s blog opens by concentrating on Russian bureaucracy and the barriers it can present. In a country of “extraordinary opportunities”, ideas are too often curtailed by problems in the system. White believes that “realisation of any innovative idea requires fundamental trust...
A Jazz Leader for the New Era
Hailed by none other than Bill Clinton as one of the world’s greatest living saxophone players, Igor Butman is an icon of Russian musical life. Born in St Petersburg in 1961, he took up the instrument at 15 with encouragement from his jazz aficionado father, a keen musician who worked by day and gigged by...
In Conversation with Chris Potter
Potter’s album Gratitude (Verve, 2001) saw the saxophonist pay eloquent tributes to his key inspirators on the instrument—Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Eddie Harris and Ornette Coleman included. When asked which of his own contemporaries Potter draws on, he spoke of a mutual cross-pollination they all use to raise the bar. “I really enjoy...
