Feurtag Biography

In honor of the anniversary of Vladimir Borisovich “Jazz. RU ”with pleasure makes the broadcast of the wide network public a monumental interview, which he gave to the deputy chief editor of our publication Anna Filipieva five years ago, to his flying: so far it came out only on paper“ jazz. Anna Filipieva photo: the editorial archive seems to have no reason to doubt that this youthful cheerful person who, generously sharing his knowledge of jazz and his endless love for him, brought thousands, tens of thousands of people throughout Rus' of the Great - now, expressed by scientific Latin, Oktogenar.

That is, "living eighth decade." But still I can’t believe it. Vladimir Feurtag, August, the Jazz in the Hermitage Garden festival to determine in one word the role of Vladimir Borisovich Feiertag in the Russian jazz community is even more difficult than to believe in the figure of the Jazz historian? Of course, and the first in Leningrad, to whom the Soviet government officially entrusted the lectures on jazz, and even an honored artist of Russia.

Jazz popularizer? Of course: teaches the history of jazz to students of the music school. Mussorgsky and the University of Culture and Arts, where he is approved as a professor, leads jazz radio programs, gives public lectures, writes books. But to what occupation to attribute to the Autumn Rhythms festival, which Vladimir Borisovich spent in Leningrad with the years, as well as the X - George Gershvin festivals and his time, "" We remember Ellington?

And the tour in Europe and the USA, which he arranged for domestic musicians at the turn of the Soviet and post -Soviet era? And ... in short: how do we define Feiertaga? We turn to the answers to the anniversary. The records began, all dance music ... Mom was not up to me, she was forced to work in a cinema in some pop orchestric. And in this regard, I could go to the Serenade of the Solar Valley fifteen times when it went on the screen.

But it acts! I was at that time. I heard our orchestras, my mother took me to Eddie Roster. Yes, great. But then suddenly [on the screen] a real Big band! No violins, there are no hooting and sounds somehow differently ... Therefore, I think that the “Serenade of the Sunny Valley” and Glenn Miller are the first swallow for me and my generation. And not the American lifestyle, not the wealth shown in the film, warmed us at all.

Nobody paid attention to this. But what people play, how they dance and how they feel good at the same time - I really liked it. Then, you see, there are a lot of children's competitions.

The mass of children appears on them, and the scene infects and spoils them. Imagine: a girl seven years old with a bow sang under Sarah Voin - and a deafening success! And then she becomes fifteen years old, and there is complete disappointment: no one needs you. And the psyche breaks. It was like that with me. Imagine a year. I was not a child prodigy, but suddenly I realized that if I come to the hospital, I play the foxtrot piano, which I picked up by ear, or the Matvey Blanter song, they applaud me, give a letter, praised, I get gratitude; And I play a decent Beethoven - nothing of the kind, only they are transferred from class to class.

That is, I realized that this music is needed, I earn fame on it, and the academic does not give a damn thing. So this situation was interpreted by the psychology of the child, and my mother did not mind this. She herself was a good tapor, played on the morning gymnastics radio, improvised to the extent that the classic could improvise. She was a good pianist with improvisational deposits, although Jazz did not know and did not want to know, but she encouraged my game by ear.

This was for me the first musical step in jazz, and I wanted to play it. I heard something-I certainly picked up. Moreover, my mother, apparently, was a little tried to earn extra money. As I remember now, we went to the cinema with her, for us it was free, because she worked there. And imagine. City of Chita. The movie show, I have nowhere to leave me. Here we are sitting, watching "Two fighters." Bernes sings the “Dark Night”, my mother writes out notes, and I should quickly write down the words, because then the orchestra will be able to play it.

I guess so that, apparently, my mother made an arrangement. Accordingly, they sat with her two sessions - all, notes and text are recorded. I am from a family of musicians, and it is clear that I went to music. But during the war, of course, I was free, I did not do it. We moved all the time because my mother worked with the theater. Where I just did not study!

Two months in Khabarovsk, two in Blagoveshchensk, two in Chita, in Irkutsk for several months ... She worked in the Leningrad New Theater, as the Lensovet Theater was called then. In the year, he was signed for a year to serve a special Far Eastern army. There the war found the theater. Mom was then in St. Petersburg with me, but when the war began, she was called there - just to help out.

We were already pulled out of the blockade city.I poorly remember this move, because I always wanted to see how the bomb falls, but I was not allowed. I said: “Then I will close! This is a childhood, you understand ... And very infantile, because I was a home boy, brought up with a nanny, there were always some aunts around me that protected me from everything.

I was a cord and dreamed of becoming wagged. Then he dreamed of becoming a pilot ... I always liked transport. And so I go now, maybe with less pleasure, but with great curiosity. I always look out the window, I like to see stations, crossings, which train has passed ... I am fascinated by the road, movement ... Did you pay attention that Jazz generally went from the movement?

And the blues too. After all, thirty percent of blues is written about trains, about movement! Having graduated from a seven-year-old music school, I was not able to enter a music school, because I was rather weak for this. At the end of the tenth grade, I returned to Leningrad, entered the university for the philfak and practically tied with music.

But it is not possible to hide in the student environment. And since I, nevertheless,, as they say, “labal” on the piano, then at every evening I was put to the instrument, and I played by ear. I was not the only one, many had a children's music school behind me, and we began to make student orchestri. Vladimir Feurtag all my student years I was in charge of amateur performances, I was a culture, I was in the Komsomol Committee on Cultural Bath, and held some kind of stocks-sometimes completely idiotic!

I just can’t forget one of them, because I am ashamed. But what to do! I was obliged. We had a curator “from above”, as was opened then. They told me: “You must organize a cultural trip to the play“ From the Spark ”by George MDivani, and then we will have a discussion of the performance.” This is a play about the Batumsk period in the life of Stalin. How I distributed tickets - I don’t remember anymore.

I also do not remember the performance at all. I only remember: it ends with the fact that the curtain closes, Stalin comes out, and Lenin suddenly descends from the stairs with a newspaper in his hand and in the corresponding position. He sees Stalin, approaches him and clicks his hand. Such a symbolic end. I am with a group of Komsomol members - there were five of us - we went to invite the director and performer of the role of Stalin to the university for discussion.

I am seventeen years old, the second year ... Tovstonovov Georgy Tovstonogov, later the main director of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in Leningrad. We came to them, we accepted us, and let's bring this nonsense, they say, we really want you to tell you how you entered the image of the leader ... They look gloomily at us, and I now understand what idiots we represented. They understood everything then, and we - nothing!

This is my Komsomol past. Two diplomas and one orchestra I have always been both an accompanist and a tower, played in the evenings ... Then, a year in, when it became possible, I already had an orchestra in my city. They played a little at closed school evenings ... Sometimes at the university they asked me: “We know that you have an orchestra. Come on, you have a student evening!

Then, when I got as a teacher at the Department of Foreign Languages ​​at the Military Mechanical Institute, now bearing the name of Marshal Ustinov, I was one man at the department, and family women immediately raped me all the evening hours. I was young, and they were all older ... I looked - I have a free day. And I went to a music school, hiding my diploma. He brought the certificate and said, they say, here, I want to do.

And there was a shortage, and there was not enough one theorist or composer. They told me: “Can you write music? And they took it.