Taras Kushniruk: Weather vanes of Lviv jazz

Kateryna Ziabliuk
author, musician

Taras Kushniruk is one of the leading jazz guitarists of the younger generation in Ukraine. He lives and works in Lviv, a city that has always been a kind of crossroads of different cultures from all over Europe. Thanks to this, Taras has had the opportunity to collaborate with many European, mostly Polish, musicians. He is a member of numerous bands, including Mark Tokar Belvedere Group, ShockolaD, and Lviv Hammond Trio.

Taras has gone through many transformations as a musician, but from the very beginning, he has stuck to his line - playing music and improving his skills. For him, it is not so much a matter of self-expression as a "social thread" with the environment in which he lives, a way of communicating with both relatives and strangers. In Lviv, Taras is surrounded by many prominent figures who have made significant contributions to the development of Lviv culture. By joining them and offering his ideas, he has unwittingly become an indispensable part of history that combines memory and the future.

It was a pleasant conversation. When we called Taras, it didn't feel like an interview. We were just talking about people we know who have brought something valuable to our lives. It turned out that the lion's share of them were Lviv residents, and it's hard to imagine a person who could talk with such awe about so many people from this environment. It was clear that the interview format would not reveal their portraits in full, so a coherent story from Taras's mouth, where one motif flows into another, seemed the most natural solution.

People

Mark Tokar

I can tell you about each of them in order. I'll probably start with Mark Tokar, with whom I played in the Belvedere band, a sextet with Lviv musicians. It was something completely unlike anything that had happened before [in Lviv - ed.] Mark had no recordings of the compositions he brought, and he showed them right at the rehearsals. Everything was very open to improvisation. We had a popular concert formula - a song, a completely improvised transition, and the next song. It always sounded good.

Mark devoted a lot of time to free improv, mostly doing various exercises on attention and interaction. My favourite was a telegraph-like exercise where you, like the others, pick one note and play it only, in different registers. Everyone chooses a different note and the result is a rather abstract picture, always different and ultimately harmonious. We also made a "wall of sound": when we started the soundcheck on stage, we just started playing as loudly as we could at one point. Everything was "shouting"!

Over time, more and more interesting things happened - for example, the brass players looked at each other and found some harmonies. This became so common that during the performance of the pieces, this sound palette would suddenly appear, some interval or a strange chord, which at first glance was not at all in tune with the rest, and you had to be able to adjust to it.

Another interesting thing is that Mark showed us atypical ways of playing sounds on his instrument. However, we didn't talk so often about technical aspects - what chords to play or what specific arrangements to make. It was more like an ongoing philosophical discussion.

It seems to me that Mark wanted to be in this band like Miles Davis (laughs). He gave us complete freedom, left room for our interpretations, and did not interfere.

There was a time when we played concerts exclusively with music by Wayne Shorter, his favourite composer. It was a real challenge for me because there was no piano and I was responsible for all the awkward chords and ever-changing bass lines. With this and other programs, we travelled a lot to different cities in Ukraine and Poland.

For some time, the guitarist Alex Maksymiv lived in Lviv. He was very different from the other musicians, primarily because of his level, which was many times higher than ours [local musicians - ed.] You had to be prepared to understand how good he was, and most people didn't understand it, even though they admired him. I wouldn't say that I know him well, but I remember that my first jazz guitar lesson was with him. I knew nothing and couldn't do anything, but he decided to start with very complicated structures right away - some chord progressions, and alternate modes in the blues. He said: "This is how you can play it!" Only 4 or 5 years later, I got back to him with a message: "Alex, I have a question. We used to have lessons together and you wrote me these chords on a piece of paper. Now tell me, what is it? I think I'm ready for this" (laughs).

Besides, we often crossed paths at concerts or jams, in Lviv and when he moved to Berlin.

“...here [in Ukraine] miracles happen only to people who want something. If you strive, you will find answers to your questions.”

Ihor Hnydyn

What I remember best about meeting Ihor Hnydyn is the beginning of my musical journey 12 years ago, quite a long time ago. At that time, Anastasia Lytvyniuk, an active Lviv pianist, my additional piano teacher and Ihor Hnydyn's wife, was pregnant, and Ihor kept asking me to play. Badly, ineptly, but a lot and often. There was a jam session every Thursday, and one day he called me and said: "Come over, let's play today". I didn't understand what he was talking about, so I slowly went to the club (because the other musicians were still playing their set), deliberately being late. Ihor runs up to me and says: "Hurry up, we've been waiting for you!". I knew only three jazz standards at the time, and I played them from sheet music - some blues, Cantaloupe Island and Watermelon Man. It was a very rich repertoire. It was enough for us to jam for several hours.

And then Igor said the terrible words: "Taras, let's play something else. For example, Foggy Day". I said I didn't know. Then "Autumn in New York!" insists Igor. I answer in the same way. "'Ugh, what do you know then?!' Ihor said annoyed, in front of other people. I felt uncomfortable, so I decided that I would play everything by memory. Make mistakes, get lost, but from memory. By the next jam, I had learned 15 songs, I could barely get them out, but I was still able to play them without notes. That's how it all started.

Thanks to Igor Hnydyn and Nastia [Anastasia] Lytvyniuk, we could go to Cho-jazz masterclasses in Poland. These people have been taking huge groups of musicians from Ukraine for many years. I've been there several times, and I have very fond memories of this place. Two meters away from me, I saw people on stage playing in a way that you only hear on the records of the world's best performers. Everyone had a friendly attitude, so I wasn't afraid to go on stage and play with them. Cho-jazz is a place where time stands still, a complete vacuum, and nothing changes over the years. It's the same system - permanent teaching staff and students who play as they play. But this is exactly what allows you to build strong connections with people if you come there every year.

As a guitarist, I was very lucky with my teachers - Attilla Muehl and Rafał Sarnecki. I still keep in touch with them, even though I haven't attended those masterclasses for four years now, and even when they came to Kyiv, for example, I went there just to spend time with them.

When I was already studying at the conservatory, bassist Ihor Zakus became my teacher at some point. At the first lesson, he told me: "Taras, I don't know how to play the guitar, I can't teach you anything. But you have to record transcriptions of your improvisations on video and send them to me." I understood that I was the only student who did this. When I went to Cho-jazz again, I went to the jam and suddenly the magic was gone - I already knew who was doing what, what they were standing on, and so on. As usual, 20 minutes of blues, 15 trumpeters, 10 saxophonists, and one guitarist, because it takes too long to connect to the sound amplifier (laughs). I played and afterward, Atilla came up to me and said, "What happened? What the hell!? Last year you could barely play, and now you play well, you can do almost anything." And a year later, in the same place, he said that there was nothing to complain about - everything sounded right. One day, we - Atilla, Ihor Zakus and I - met in Kyiv and Atilla was still asking Ihor what he had done to me in two years to have made such unbelievable progress.

Atilla Muehl (center) with the trainees during workshops in the city of Chodzież (private archive).

In the end, miracles happen here [in Ukraine] only to people who want something. If you strive, you will find answers to your questions. No one will follow you around and ask you questions: "Well, dear, did you play your instrument today, did you learn the notes? Well done, go play some more". And there is nothing personal in this, it's just that modern realities require people with a specific position who are constantly working on themselves.

At this rate, I could play more than 100 jazz standards by heart at some point. But before that, everything looked different, just like other musicians: there were mostly so-called "Lviv Evergreen Songs", about 20 pieces that everyone could play at once. Later, the LV Jazz Club appeared in Lviv on the initiative of Yuriy Sadovyi. He actually created a real paradise for jazz musicians - we were very warmly received there. We practically lived there from opening to closing - jam sessions, concerts, meetings with friends, everything was available to us. And so we won the right to use an even bigger concert hall in this club, and then bassist Andrey Arnautov called me with a proposal to create a stage band for a jam session. The only condition was that we had to play new songs every week, preferably as a souvenir. At some point, we started to repeat jazz standards, because the only ones left were those that needed to be carefully rehearsed, and this already contradicted the jam session format. We published a list of these standards on Facebook before each jam session so that others could prepare. Although it's great to learn something new, many people complained that it was unfair, because how could they possibly learn something new every week? But the main argument was that they were lazy, everyone only wanted to play what they knew for a long time. But then people got used to it, and it pushed us all forward. We played like that for about two years.

Yurii Seredin

Yura is a phenomenal pianist. We went to the same music school in Lviv. There was a time when Mark Tokar was making fun of him because he moved to the capital, but it seems that everyone has forgotten about it (laughs). Speaking of local musical tales, he told me how Lee Konitz came to Lviv, and that was the moment when he decided to put aside classical music and take jazz seriously. He is probably one of the most impressive musicians I know. In addition to the fact that he learned many things systematically - let's call it "correctly" - his compositions have a lot of value, aesthetically and conceptually, and all of this is professionally arranged. He's also just a good person - you can talk to him about anything, from exchanging absurd jokes to discussing some household mechanisms or philosophy and psychology.

Markiyan Ivashchyshyn

…But everyone will remember the story of Markiyan for a long time. He was the ideologist behind many of the city's cultural initiatives, one of them being the famous Jazz Bez festival. This is a unique format because it takes place all over Ukraine and even attracts some cities in Poland, such as Przemysl and Lublin. Therefore, when musicians were invited to the festival, they rarely performed in the same city, but only went on a tour within the same festival. At the same time, each city was autonomous, and local organisers sometimes chose the headliners themselves and referred them to organisers from other cities. The key idea for me was that Markian was all about presenting local musicians, not just superstars from abroad, as is often the case. Now this festival is experiencing a "plateau" in a sense, because nothing has contributed to its development in recent years - neither the pandemic, nor Markiyan's death, nor a full-scale war. So now it's very difficult to imagine Jazz Bez taking place in the conventional Kramatorsk at this time.

Every year, the Dzyga club, where he worked and regularly met, celebrates his musical "birthdays". Nowadays, a lane has been opened near Dzyga, Markiyan Ivashchyshyn's place, which is a continuation of the club's coffee shop and bar.

I didn't have time to get to know him better. My most vivid memory is when I took lessons from Alex Maksymiv, which took place in Dzyga. After that, Markiyan came and gave me a huge piece of dried fish meat (laughs). I also played at his festival " Flyugery L'vova" with my fusion band. I remember that he was very keen that it was original, original material, he didn't want the usual reworkings. He took care of us on a really professional level, and we didn't even expect to get any royalties. I didn't know much about anything back then.

In general, although we didn't know each other very well, I felt supported by him. It was like being accepted. And whenever Markiyan was sitting at his famous table, even when he was busy, he would take a moment to at least say hello. Now I regret a little that I didn't have time to develop this relationship, but I had one more thing going for me - although I was already a grown-up boy, Markian, in turn, was already a big, adult, and serious uncle. At least it seemed so, and sometimes I was just afraid to talk to him (laughs).

Environments

Jazz veterans

Trumpeter Yakiv Tsvetinskyi used to tell a funny story. One day he came to the LV Jazz Club, shortly before it opened at 4 pm. He saw an older man looking at the posters on the front door of the club with interest. He politely asks Yakov: "Where is the jazz club?". He replies, just as politely: "This is the jazz club. We invite you to a concert tonight at 20.00, and the club itself opens soon, at 16.00." The man noticed his case and asked if it was a trumpet. "I'm a musician too! I used to play jazz with the guys, oh, long nights! But, as usual, I had a different profession," he began to get nostalgic. After a few short stories, he remembered: "And the guys and I created the Lviv blues, yes, it was us!" Yakiv asked what it sounded like, and the man started humming under his breath: "Tu doo doo, tu doo doo, tu doo doo, tu doo doo doo...". And then Yakiv realised that it was... "Bag's Groove" by Miles Davis. He didn't comment on it, but the story instantly became known in various musical circles across the country and reached the musicians from Dnipro. In honour of this story, saxophonist Danylo Vynarykov composed his composition "Dnipro Bead", which was a response to that "Lvivsky blues", I, unfortunately, do not know who it was. Perhaps, if we met, I would recognise him. But older musicians rarely show up at our gatherings.

I remember when the saxophonist Richard Kanaforskyi, a member of the Domarsky Quartet, was still alive. He used to come and listen to us at our jam sessions, often playing. In the end, he was probably the only one who integrated out of all the older musicians. There was also trumpeter Volodymyr Kit, saxophonist Valentyn Uchianin, and pianist Arkadii Orekhov.

However, all of these people did not play music professionally or for a living. Valentin Uchanin, for example, has a degree in physics, and if I'm not mistaken, he teaches at a university. This is a fairly common scenario. Ihor Khoma's Medicus band was also famous - it was a band of doctors! That is, music is mostly a hobby for all of them. Due to the circumstances, we hardly ever crossed paths with their environment, even though we all knew each other. So we didn't have this transfer of knowledge from the older to the younger generations. I think we would have been able to do this over time.

Earlier, back in the 30s and 40s of the last century, Lviv jazz had its heroes... Vesolovskyi, Leonid Yablonskyi, Renata Yarosevych - they, in turn, were closely connected with what was happening in Poland, so the leading trend in jazz was sentimental songs intended either for chamber events or theatrical situations. And, strangely enough, no one talked about them 10 years ago. Today, there are entire projects that perform Veselovsky's music, for example, and make arrangements for their original compositions. You can hear his music at concerts in many places. So, is he often remembered now? Without a doubt. But are his songs played at jam sessions? No...

Leonid Yablonskyi is third from the left, with a violin © D.R.

In the context of a full-scale war (and since 2014), such personalities are a real find, and to preserve Ukrainian history, they were quickly popularised, as happened with many other artists and figures in other fields.

Leopolis Jazz Festival

My history with the Leopolis Jazz Festival began a little later because at the beginning of the festival (2011) I was not interested in jazz. But I still attended almost every year. The great advantage of the festival was that you could listen to everyone for free. And there were world-famous figures. There were daytime stages on the main square and near one of the palaces, as well as evening concerts that could be listened to both on the paid territory and in the so-called fan zone, where you could sit on the grass and listen to the broadcast from the concert on a giant screen with good sound. And in the beginning, it was even the case that the stage could be seen from behind the fence, and people sat right there.

Indeed, Leopolis Jazz is an important page in the history of Ukrainian jazz. Landmark concerts, jam sessions with headliners at the Libraria club, and a lot of musicians from all over the country and abroad. Everyone still remembers how Robert Glasper came to Ukraine a few years ago and came to the jazz club with his whole band, where we all played until late at night. Or Joe Lovano wearing a funny hat, walking around with his camera and taking pictures of everything around him. There are many such stories, and usually, it was the Libraria club that was known for the fact that sometimes, out of the blue, you could meet someone from abroad - not without the efforts of local musicians who knew who to invite.

Trio Klein concert on the main square stage © Oleksii Karpovych

"In any case, this festival has always been a great holiday for us. Recent years have been very difficult for the organisers, as only one festival has been held since 2020 - in 2021. It is unlikely that it will be revived - given the sources of funding in the past, it would be an absolute disrespect to those who died during this time. However, we hope that it will be possible to find another format, based on different rules.

Oleksii KarpovychFebruary 26, 2024Comment