DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2023.3.40880

EDN: UTXFWQ

Abstract: The subject of the research is the work of jazz pianist and composer Nikolai Yakovlevich Levinovsky, the creator and leader of one of the most popular jazz ensembles in the 1980s, "Allegro", a representative of Russian jazz. His performing and composing activities during the 1970s and 1980s are considered in the socio-cultural context that determines the transformation of ideological and cultural norms. The author evaluates the activity of the Philharmonic chamber jazz ensemble "Allegro" by N. Y. Levinovsky as an important factor in activating the process of institutionalization of jazz in the Soviet cultural space. The evolution of N. Levinovsky's compositional thinking, which turned in the 1980s to experiments contributing to the formation of the autoimage of Soviet jazz, is considered. The author reveals the peculiarity of N. Ya. Levinovsky's compositional thinking, the stylistic relief of whose compositions was formed by a system of interpenetration of jazz music techniques and lado-intonation structures of national cultures. Based on the analysis of concert performances and studio recordings of the Allegro jazz ensemble, the specificity of the ensemble sound is revealed, the novelty of N. Y. Levinovsky's approach to the embodiment of the stylistics of swing or jazz-rock compositions is determined. The conclusion is made that N.Y. Levinovsky's compositional work is planned to bring jazz music techniques closer to national musical traditions, which contributes to the further development of jazz art, the expansion of the geography of its popularization and productive assimilation.

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2020.2.32468

Abstract: The subject of this article's research is the importance of sound recordings as an evolutionary source in the historiography of jazz. The importance of sound recording in the evolution and the study of jazz cannot be overestimated. It is much more significant than in the case of any other kind of music art. Sound recording is of great scientific value and jazz heritage's leading resource, which is an opinion held by most jazz researchers. The development of jazzology has led to scientific viewpoints that raise questions about the reevaluation of the role of sound recording. The research method used is the analysis of various scientific views on this problem, which helps readers understand the specificity of jazz sound recording. The author considers the opinions of researchers G. Schuller, J. Rasula, E. Clarke, M. Butterfield, and A. Batashev. This list of names shows that there’s only one Russian researcher who is studying this problem. The scientific novelty of this research lies in the author’s exploration of a relatively unexplored topic. The research has revealed the presence of contradictory scientific views that should be further studied.  

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2018.3.27657

Abstract: The article deals with the corpus of problems related to the processes of commercialization of jazz musical art. The formation of artistic features of jazz in a complex way is interconnected with a number of industrial processes that have unfolded in the sphere of the music business. The activity of record labels of jazz orientation was often dictated not by artistic, but purely market interests. At the same time, the simplification of the language, stylistics and thinking of individual jazz musicians is not inherent in all jazz culture immanently, but should be analyzed from the standpoint of the intervention of market algorithms in the space of artistic processes. By examining the historical realities of a number of large Western labels, as well as the physical formats of the distribution of audio media, a special destructive influence exerted by the transnational sound recording business on the ideological layer of jazz art is revealed. As a means of overcoming the problems arising from the publication and popularization of outstanding samples of jazz open to a bold artistic search, it is proposed to pay more attention to the prospects for the development of digital services and streaming systems. With their help, independent labels will again have the opportunity to reach the interested audience, as well as to gain new listeners.

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2021.6.35933

Abstract: The leading research topic in this article is the analysis of the specifics of the development of saxophone art in a symphony orchestra. The chosen problem requires the study of this direction from the perspective of a broader socio-historical context, within which it is possible to identify special signs of musical culture, both in the general context and in individual genres. In this vein, the study of saxophone music in a symphony orchestra allows us to outline, firstly, the origins of the origin of interest and the introduction of a special instrument into the cultural panorama, secondly, to trace the ways and impulses of its spread, and thirdly, to find out the problems of the saxophone as part of a symphony orchestra. In order to fully understand its special place in the cultural continuum of a certain place and epoch, music for the saxophone should be considered not just as a specific artifact that has been embodied in creativity, performance, education, but as a multi-level and three-dimensional concept in the musical art of the XIX-XXI centuries. The disclosure of the role of the saxophone as part of a symphony orchestra in the article is not just carried out through the prism of the representation of a certain number of facts, names, events, and can be traced as the correspondence of the development of the instrument to those historical, political, socio-economic and, above all, cultural and artistic processes that have formed a kind of creative reinterpretation of one of the most popular modern instruments. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the genesis, development trends and the current state of saxophone art in general, as well as, in particular, in the composition of a symphony orchestra. In the study, the author focuses on iconic performers and teachers, whose personal achievements in the field of concert, research and musical and social activities had a significant impact on the formation of the saxophone as part of a symphony orchestra.

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2023.2.40897

EDN: HLUGJC

Abstract: The subject of the study is the creativity of the leaders of the Moscow jazz school of the 1950s and 1960s: the variety orchestra at the Moscow State Orchestra under the direction of E. Rosner, the jazz orchestra of the Central Chamber of Artists Yu. The Saul Variety Orchestra conducted by O. Lundstrom. The article summarizes the results of the study of the domestic jazz art of the 1950s and 1960s, substantiates the trend in the development of instrumental jazz, and characterizes the repertoire policy of Moscow jazz ensembles. The hypothesis of the influence on the development of the national jazz art of the 1950s and 1960s of those innovations that were formed in American and European jazz of the 1940s and 1950s is substantiated. The characteristics of the performing styles of the leading metropolitan soloists and collectives are given, their role in the development of the Moscow jazz school is determined. The scientific novelty lies in the analysis of the performing styles of the leading Moscow jazz soloists and ensembles of the 1970s and 1980s, which allowed us to substantiate the hypothesis of the influence on the domestic jazz art of trends formed in American and European jazz of the 1940s and 1950s. They are based on the principle of dominance of small groups of participants, the desire to improve technical and expressive capabilities all instruments of the ensemble, based on the use of the artistic potential of the solo parts. The peculiarity of the Moscow jazz ensembles, which along with Leningrad and Baltic ensembles were the flagships of the national jazz art of the 1970s and 1980s, was the strengthening of experimental orientation in the field of expanding the timbre palette of ensemble sound through the use of electronic instruments and sonoristics techniques. The tendency of advancing the timbre-coloristic aspect of musical sound to the forefront of creative searches brings the sphere of jazz and academic art of the second half of the XX century closer.

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2018.2.26973

Abstract: The article deals with musical opuses created in the conditions of synthesis of jazz and academic idioms. The authors analyze the positions of domestic and foreign researchers connected with the definition of style attributes of two unorthodox directions of contemporary music art — the Third Stream and the Progressive.  A number of researchers uphold the positions, according to which the Third Stream is an independent artistic phenomenon. The development of its aesthetic features is associated with the emergence of a new type of composers whose professional skills are closely connected with both ideological bases of academic music and the artistic palette of jazz music. In numerous studies devoted to jazz culture, the style definitions of the Progressive and the Third Stream are in a state of mutual competition. Depending on the context used by the researcher, the phenomena can intersect, displace or replace each other. Ethnic elements were included in the integration process in the course of further development of the ideas of the Third Stream, by reference to artistic practice. The artistic peculiarities of the Third Stream and the Progressive were analysed by some researchers through the prism of more general musical issues, so that the boundaries of these phenomena are constantly shifting. In opposition to the dominant paradigm there are musicologists who strongly criticize the idea of mixing different levels of artistic layers, levelling the deep differences of the synthesized musical cultures. In the current situation, there is a need for an in-depth approach to the specific features of the Progressive and the Third Stream which should be understood as independent phenomena that can be successfully distinguished. 

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2019.2.29535

Abstract: The third stream and the progressive jazz have a special place in the modern orchestral jazz. The article considers the album “Real Enemies” by an American musician James Argue. His are in the top of ideas of the contemporary experimental jazz. One of the peculiarities of Argue’s work, which makes it stand out from similar works of the earlier period, is the closeness of this composer’s ideas to Postmodernist practices. The authors consider some Postmodernist aspects typical for the contemporary jazz. Argue himself is considered as a jazz artist inclined to excessive intellectual component, who prioritizes orchestrations, relatively complex by jazz standards, and exquisite work consisting in jazz stylistics rethinking via mixing the instruments of jazz expression with various techniques of academic music of the 20th century. The authors give special attention to a detailed musicological analysis of the key compositions of the Secret Society’s Real Enemies.  

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2019.1.29034

Abstract: The main task of the article is to detect those styles of modern jazz which are esthetically reduced and inclined to contingence with idealistic layers of pop-music. Among the most prominent phenomena of this kind the author considers smooth jazz, the variety of jazz music formed in the 1970s-1980s. The article uses the historical approach to generalize particular persons representing this disputable phenomenon of musical culture. Special attention is given to the problem of penetration and integration of ideas from “high” jazz music (J. Coltrane) into the sphere of simplified musical discourses. Under the influence of complex sociocultural processes, Smooth jazz has simplified the range of complex idealistic principles formed in the world of creative jazz performers. Smooth jazz has become one of numerous life forms whose appearance should be explained not by esthetics or artistic necessity, but primarily by aggressive economic principles of music industry.