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Louisville, Kentucky Open World Host Jams With Alumni in Yaroslavl
March 17, 2005
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| Open World host Mike Tracy (right) and alumni Platon Polyanskiy (center) and Ovagem Sultanyan (left) blow away the audience at the Yaroslavl Jazz Festival in March. |  |
| Tracy describes his Russian jazz trip to a St. Petersburg television reporter. | Jazzman Mike Tracy is no doubt the only Open World host who has ever shared a stage with Ella Fitzgerald and Buddy Rich. March 17 found the saxophone recording artist and University of Louisville professor on stage in the jazz-crazy city of Yaroslavl, Russia, performing with the all-alumni Open World Band. The group — which included five alumni hosted by Tracy in Louisville last fall — was among the headlining acts at “Jazz Over the Volga River,” one of Russia’s premier jazz festivals, and one of the few dating from Soviet times.
Tracy and his Open World jam mates treated the crowd at the Yaroslavl Jazz Center to exuberant renditions of Duke Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time,” and five other numbers. “Even though only a brief time had passed since the Louisville exchange, I could hear improvement in each of our Open World participants’ playing,” Tracy reports. And no wonder. While in Louisville, Tracy’s Open World delegates had had classes, improvisation workshops, and performance sessions with such American jazz names as the Heath Brothers, saxophonist Virginia Mayhew, pianist Harry Pickens, Tracy himself, and Jamey Aebersold, one of the world’s foremost jazz educators.
Tracy’s Yaroslavl gig was arranged by local jazz impresario and festival organizer Igor Gavrilov. It was Gavrilov’s idea to reunite the Open World host on stage with as many of the Louisville delegates as possible, “as a way to continue the relationship we began in Louisville and to share with his audience the value of our efforts,” Tracy says. Saxophonist Ovagem Sultanyan came from Rostov, trumpeter Platon Polyanskiy from Novosibirsk, guitarist Aleksandr Rodovskiy from Samara, bassist Vladimir Chernitsyn from St. Petersburg, and drummer Aleksandra Mogilevich from right in Yaroslavl. And three other Open World jazz-program participants joined the group for the blistering concert-ending jam.
Gavrilov also asked Tracy to meet with area jazz educators and students and to help judge a jazz-band competition for 10- to 18-year-olds held in tandem with the festival. “I was really impressed by the level of enthusiasm exhibited at the competition,” Tracy says. “Students of this age are the true future of jazz no matter the country.”
Yaroslavl was just one stop on what became a Russian jazz odyssey for the American professor. In Moscow, he visited the renowned Moscow Conservatory’s jazz department, met with Open World jazz nominators and another of his Louisville participants, and checked out the music scene at jazz nightspots Le Club and B2.
In St. Petersburg, Tracy lectured on Miles Davis’ album Kind of Blue at the American Corner in the Mayakovsky Central Public Library right before taping an interview on his Russia trip for a local television station. And in between attending a rehearsal at the Jazz Philharmonic Center and dropping by the cutting-edge JFC Jazz Club, the Open World host made time to get together with another jazz-program alumnus.
Reporting back on his visits with Russian music educators, performers, and promoters, Tracy says, “The Open World inclusion of jazz is most welcome by all. Each shared how such interactions between Russian and American participants will help to promote jazz, music education, and cultural and personal understanding.”
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