Classics meets Jazz

For decades, Yuri Bashmet and Igor Butman have regularly met at concert venues. The outstanding musicians and close friends have a perfect sense of each other’s style. Yuri Bashmet has always been interested in jazz, loves this musical genre and has a particular taste for improvisation.

“Great composers, as a rule, were great improvisers,” says Igor Butman. – “Through the prism of jazz we admire the genius of those composers and we want the audience to feel the same.

A kind of refrain of the concert will be a reference piece from Musorgsky’s piano cycle Pictures at an Exhibition. Few works enjoy such popularity, but there is probably no other work that boasts so many arrangements – from the “classical” to the alternative. The theme of The Walk, which, with its repetitions, cements “Pictures…” and symbolizes the author himself, will be reproduced “in every way”: in major and minor, in orchestral and jazz garb, in original sound and in free improvisation.

But not only Mussorgsky will be played this evening in the Winter Theater – the exhibits of this unusual musical “exhibition” will be Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Raykhelson. “The Little Night Serenade, Adagio by Lolashvili, Vocalise and Snowdrop from The Seasons will also be performed in unusual interpretations.

And separately we would like to say that the meeting of Igor Butman and Yuri Bashmet on one stage is a meeting of two well-known and favorite festivals, held in Sochi for many years under the artistic direction of these outstanding musicians.

Moscow Soloists Chamber Ensemble
Artistic Director, Conductor and Soloist – Yuri Bashmet

Moscow Jazz Orchestra
Artistic Director, Conductor and Soloist – Igor Butman