Alexey Kruglov - Yardbird Suite (2020)

His work attracted me as soon as I picked up a saxophone and started studying solos and analyzing scores of one of my favorite musicians. Even now, performing these wonderful pieces, I am fascinated by innovative ideas of one of the outstanding jazzmen of the 20th century. “Krugly Band” first presented the program with music by Charlie Parker about 15 years ago. This year, Pavel Timofeev, my old friend and initial participant of the project, and our colleagues Artyom Tretyakov and Roman Plotnikov decided to make a program timed with the 100th anniversary of the bebop founder. The album is aimed to display the bright key elements in the Bird works, trying to discover our own features inside his music, refracting it into various colors through the artistic method called “Dromuse”. During the mixing of the album we aimed for an authentic, natural sound, which allows some errors. The lo-fi aesthetic in the context of this release is very symbolic.

The structure of this music is a kind of suite. Each track has certain sound objects that we investigate. Every piece of the album has its own highlights and imaginative solutions. There are many links to Igor Stravinsky, who was Parker’s favorite composer. For example, “Yardbird Suite”, performed like a reflective ballad, contains a code that refers to Stravinsky: all “A” parts of the composition have a tonal center that fits into Stravinsky’s “Petrushka chord”. At the same time there’s a parallel with another jazz innovator – John Coltrane. “Now’s the Time” is completely built using a famous harmonic scheme called “Coltrane changes”. Here we are not only showing the path that this piece has travelled, but also reflecting on the path of bebop, which has become a source of inspiration for many generations of improvisers. Bird and his companions’ role in the development of music is invaluable. Young musicians, who rapidly entered the world of jazz and reformed it, brought a unique methodology and an extraordinary aesthetics into the art. And even now jazzmen listen to the music of bebop founder with bated breath. They turn to his genius and acquire new creative impulses.

I want to devote the album to my teachers, brilliant saxophonists, followers of Charlie Parker - Ernest Barashvili, Sergei Rezantsev and Alexander Oseichuk. I am immensely grateful to them! Their craft allowed them to take in the smallest subtleties of bebop and academic music. Thanks to my teachers, I gained experience in traditional performance and learned to look at art with a broad eye. This helped me to implement ideas in a multi-genre direction, focusing on the works of the classics and paying tribute to great examples of art.