my interests evolved in anything but a linear fashion over the years
Just because I played a particular kind of music in the past doesn’t mean I won’t return to it later.
There were several intersecting and plunging waves.
Currently, the waves have subsided somewhat and I’m returning to real modern jazz as it is being played today.
For example, one aspect that has given me a lot of joy in recent years, has been to discover just how alive and strong our modern jazz school and scene are here in Cologne.
I grew up listening to LPs from my father’s large collection and was listening to jazz early on.
At age 11, I started to improvise, just from my imagination, and as close to the jazz idiom as I could figure out
combined with the rare opportunity to experience some jazz greats live in the soviet union back then.
That happened maybe once a year at the most
I can’t describe how excited I was already weeks before
To illustrate the cultural significance of such appearances for the country at that time,
imagine that two concerts by Duke Ellington took place in the largest sports stadium in Moscow, which holds 90,000 spectators.
As legend has it, both nights, there were ten to fifteen thousand people more who had traveled from Siberia and the entire soviet union, waiting outside the stadium, hoping to snatch a ticket.
It was an event beyond comparison.
It sealed my already burgeoning hope to become a jazz musician and encouraged me to continue on with this music.
We start with the violin because it requires the active search for the correct intonation
and strengthens absolute pitch, which I was born with.
The idea to switch to the piano wasn’t my own.
Such significant and life-changing decisions were not made at that tender age.
After six months of playing the violin, the specialists suggested that I switch to the piano.
The violin had served its purpose—to train the ears.
Because of the structure of my hands, the change to the piano was decided for me.
That’s how that happened.
I have experienced the whole world of music through the piano.
I have sometimes toyed with the idea to add another instrument.
But never did I consider to abandon the piano to devote myself to a different instrument altogether.
That was never in question,
because this instrument contains the richness of an entire orchestra.
The multiplicity of colors completely captured me.