From Russia with Jazz: Valery Ponomarev (1998)

Conversations 201 FROM RUSSIA WITH JAZZ: VALERY PONOMAREV (1998) hen I hear jazz, it’s as if I had gas on the stomach,” Soviet Pre- “Wmier Nikita Khrushchev declared in December 1963. His remark, as revealing as it was vulgar, summed up the official Soviet line on that “Western decadence” called jazz. Moscow-born trumpeter Valery Ponomarev grew up in the midst of this unenlightened, stifling environ- ment. But, inspired by the sounds he heard over the Voice of America and the few records he could acquire on the black market, Ponomarev found himself irresistibly drawn to this music. He craved the life of a jazz musician, so through somewhat unsanctioned and rather risky methods he left the Soviet Union. At the end of 1973 Ponomarev arrived in New York, and his life in jazz truly began when, at last, he got to sit in with his hero, Art Blakey. In 1977 he joined Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and worked under the master drummer for nearly four years. Since leaving Blakey, Pono- marev has performed around the world as a sideman and as the leader of his own group, Universal Language. Did you begin music on the trumpet? No, I actually banged on the piano as a kid a little bit. My mother is a pretty good amateur piano player, and also she comes from a very musical family. Her mother, my grandmother, was a singer in the Bol- shoi Theater, in the choir. My mother used to tell me, when she was very little, the most famous Russian divas would be hanging out in the house, and she would be playing on the floor with her toys. We also had, I’ll always remember, beautifully printed editions of operas and symphonies, and they were all stacked in the top drawer of the wardrobe. And every once in a while I would climb up there and look at them, and they looked beautiful with all those staffs of music. But anyway, as I say, my mother knew classical music extreme- ly well. She recognizes pieces by the first couple of bars. She would tell you right away what it is. And any time there was a sort of trivia com- petition on the radio, or anywhere for that matter, she would be always win. Anything there is, whatever question about classical music, she would identify everything immediately. And I thought that was a nor- mal thing. So how did you get to the trumpet? Well, like I say, I was always attracted to music, and in the kid’s summer camp we had a designated signal-giver. How do you call that? 202 Top Brass Like a bugler? Right, right. The guy who gives the signals. Actually we had beautiful fanfares. I was six, and I was totally blown away by that sound and by that fanfare. And that horn was like a magic, sacred, shining thing. Nobody was supposed to touch it. But I talked the guy into it. He let me try it, and soon I became a signal-giver in the camp and proved to be pretty good at it. All of the neighboring villages knew the time of whatever activities there were in the camp, and I became a “celebrity,” of sorts. Everybody in the radius of many miles knew me ’cause they would eventually come to the camp and would always ask, “Who’s blowing that fanfare? Who’s giving the signals?” “That little redhead.” I didn’t realize that, by standards of 200 years ago, I was actually playing natural trumpet. That’s how trumpet evolved. It evolved from bugles, from post horns, and so on. It is natural trumpet. It has all the natural tones in there. Valves, which were invented later, they just alter those sounds. Years later when I was in architectural college – fourteen or thirteen at the time – there was a student band and I heard the band rehearsing. I, of course, snuck in the room and hung out there, and they didn’t have a drummer. And you know how kids are. “There’s no drummer. Can I play the drums?” They said, “Yeah, OK. Go ahead, try.” They didn’t even ask me if I had experience or not. I just sat behind the drums and started banging pretty much in time. They said, “OK, you’re in the band.” So I ended up playing drums in the band. A couple of rehearsals down the road – and that scene is always in front of my eyes, I remember it very vividly – I’m sitting behind the drum set, and trumpet section is over here and the band director is fur- ther there, and one of the trumpet players put his horn down in between tunes or something, or he was looking for the music. So first thing I did, I just grabbed the horn and started playing. That moment will always stand in my mind, of course, because everybody stopped doing whatever they were doing, and they turned their heads at me. Those trumpet players were very good. They had beautiful tones themselves, but that was a very different sound. They all turned around like, “That’s you?” I said, “Yeah.” The band director said, “See me after rehearsal. I’ll give you a trumpet You’ll be learning to play trumpet.” So you weren’t actually studying music at that time. No, I was not a musician at all. Actually I just finished in art school. They kept moving me through all the courses very quick. So I was Conversations 203 supposed to graduate at the age of sixteen, but I graduated from art school at fourteen. And that’s how I got into architectural college. Actu- ally I was supposed to go to, like, an elite art school. But you could not go there until after sixteen and I was fourteen, so I went to architectural college on my merit of being an artist. But music, no, I didn’t study at all. I heard a lot at home but couldn’t even write a note if you asked me to. I wouldn’t know how to do it. But I started then, in architectural college. Did you transfer to a music school at that point? No, no. I stayed in architectural college, but, you know, there were a couple things going on. For example, the next week I went to the brass band rehearsal where our music director also was the director, and he gave me a horn. Now I would be surprised – then I was not surprised. To a kid, whatever comes, that’s it. That’s the way it is. There’s drums, you need a drummer. “OK, I’ll play drums.” Who knows that I cannot play drums? And to them I sounded pretty good. The same with the trumpet. He said, “OK, we’re playing a con- cert today. You play.” If you’d tell me now, I’d know that there’s some shaky business going on. But then I didn’t. I was a trumpet player – I was supposed to play. So I grabbed a trumpet. There was another trumpet player playing, and he said, “Watch that guy.” So I was watching him, what to do, and he kept showing me things on the music staff, which I didn’t know what they were. I just watched him finger and I fingered the same, and everything was coming out. What really happened, I realized later, was there were three trumpet players missing, and to get paid, the band director had to show up with some musicians, otherwise there would have been a problem. So he put me in there to sit, not to play. But I thought I was supposed to play, and I did play. Then he started teaching me, started showing me things, and I made very quick progress. He gave me my own horn, I was practicing at home, but all of it was still like an immature business really. It was just like a toy. My mother worked at the Tass [news] agency, and they had a band for the workers of the agency, and it was very good, very experi- enced, with a very well educated bandleader. My mother found out that they needed a drummer. So I went there and said, “Well, I’m a drummer.” The bandleader goes, “OK, let’s try it.” This time nobody could tell me I’m not a drummer ’cause I’d already played with a band. I sat in with the band, and he said, “Yeah, all right.” The leader was a trumpet player, and I told him, “Listen, I can play that.” He says, “What do you mean?” “Well, I play trumpet,” I say,“a little.” He goes, “How little? What’s your high range?” I said, “Well, I can 204 Top Brass hit E-flat, third octave.” He says, “Show it to me. Prove it to me.” So he gave me a horn and I played it. He says, “All right, you’ll play trumpet.” And then he realized I hadn’t any kind of experience. I just could hit those notes, but I couldn’t read or didn’t even know what’s what. But he was also teaching music and trumpet players, and he had a band of his own, a brass band with kids of my age. So I studied with him and started practicing seriously, and in a year from that point, I quit architectural college and went to music college.

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