“WonREDful Town” brought jazz to Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve!

They covered 6000 kilometres, gave a lot of concerts and catnapped to perform in the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve! “WonREDful Town”! The musicians from the Archangelsk region, whose repertoire consists of jazz, latino and author’s compositions! They have recently become laureates of the 1st degree at the 13th International Contest “Amber Stars” that was held in Poland and are going to present the winning compositions in Kirillov.

Master-of-ceremonies Alexander Bogdanov listed the cities where the band performed, “Minsk, Kaliningrad, Wolin, Grodno… Today we have come from Cherepovets… At 2 a.m. The museum employees have given us a warm welcome. We are very grateful to them for it. You see: we seem to visit you, but we are at home indeed! It is because we are returning from another country, from Poland, and can breathe freely. By the way, I was here many years ago, so I can compare. Restorers have carried out great work here. Your beauty is fascinating! Take care of it and don’t get used to it! Admire everything you have!”

Many people know this band with the English name as a “wonderful town”. The musicians explain that both variants are correct, “First the group was called “Red Town”, but later this name transformed into “WonREDful Town”.

The conference hall of the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve breathed in time with the musicians on March 31. The first part of the concert consisted of the works of Alexey Pilatov, composer, musician and adopter of the project “WonREDful Town”. These were his melodies filled with some form and a vivid improvised Latin jazz element that could be heard within the monastery walls. The first ones were “Marseille” and “39”. By the way, the name of the last song doesn’t have any magic number. No. The participants of the creative project studied in the class with this very number at the Archangelsk Music College. Alexander Borisovich Bogdanov teachers there. Famous guitarists of various styles and directions from all over Russia and some foreign countries were his students (Konstantin Murashko, Alexander Papiy, Alexander Firsov, Vadim Tryapitsyn, Nikolay Kulikov).

The concert of “WonREDful Town” is the whole life on the stage. Vocalist Anna Akimova lives through it in 15 languages. The audience listened to the compositions that she performed in 15 dialects. “I don’t entirely know all these languages, but I understand every song I sing”, she said. “It is some kind of phonemic pitch… But I often communicate with people speaking different languages and they correct me and say where I make mistakes. For example, I was told that my Polish was very soft. Now I am going to sing a Creole song (it is a dialect of the Portuguese). Listen to it, please…”

And a slim and elegant girl started to sing. Spectators didn’t expect such strength. They listened to her, admired and followed each movement. And she… She lived! And made everybody who attended the concert live.

Her velvet, sometimes thin and sweet voice caressed the ear and made people smile. A bright beam of light glided over the stage and illuminated interesting moments. Bass guitarist Mikhail Zvyagin was wholly given to the performance. His shoulders rose and fell. He seemed to live through every note inhaling it and breathing it out on the highest floors of his heart.

It was pleasant to realize that the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve became a presentation ground of the first music video of “WonREDful Town” for the song “I Wish I’d Have a Century”. The members of the band posted it in the Internet only the next day. Over 2000 people watched this video within only several hours!

The repertoire of the musicians representing non-standard Latin music includes songs of their own composition, adaptations of classical compositions, songs of some Soviet composers. Their concert in the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve was concluded with the famous song of Robertino Loretti “Jamaica”. The vivid musicians. The vivid final of the concert!