Talents and fans

About the musical evening in Blokhintsev Library of JINR. And not only.

It is even embarrassing to write that among the JINR employees there are many people with talents that are far removed from their main jobs - this has become such a commonplace. So the evening of March 24 in Blokhintsev Library was another confirmation of this. It was dedicated to the 66th anniversary of JINR and in the cheerful and colorful program of the concert was named accordingly: "Musical evening of JINR employees and their family members - Happy birthday, our beloved Institute!". The reading hall of Blokhintsev Library, which so organically and so often, to our joy, turns into a concert hall, was overcrowded; I arrived 10 minutes before the beginning and could hardly find an empty seat.

The evening was opened by a vocal ensemble - "Acoustic Bank" octet led by Eduard Polyakov with several JINR employees. Their second performance - the song "The shadow of your smile" perfectly decomposed into voices - finally fascinated the audience and gave more enthusiasm to listeners, whose stormy responses were flowing uninterruptedly until the end of the evening. And this is despite the fact that there were about 50 performances which lasted four hours! It is not surprising, since more than half of this time was given to the pupils of the Music School - the children and grandchildren of the Institute's employees, and how pleasant it was when familiar names were announced.

It must be assumed that many of the young musicians came before such a large audience for the first time and, of course, not everyone managed to overcome the excitement and show their performing abilities to the fullest. And yet, many have succeeded. The scope of this report does not allow me to list them all, but I will allow myself to name three of them that I especially liked - Vincent Gasparyan and Aleksandra Baldina (piano, tutors L.Kh.Akopyan and N.Yu.Staltsova, respectively) and Ivan Elin (button accordion, tutor S.A.Chistyakov).

However, let's get back to the JINR employees and their family members - the main heroes of the evening. Their performances were quite equally distributed among that of the children's. Artem Kuftin (VBLHEP, accompanist M.N.Pereboeva), performed Dvorak's "Melody" on the cello with tender penetration.

Not for the first time I listened to the vocal ensemble "Amarita" - Marina Sidorchuk (mezzo-soprano; JINR International Conference Hall), Anna Kulakovskaya (soprano) and Tatyana Kalinnikova (piano). And this time they conquered the audience with skill and coherence.

Karina Udrea (Romania, VBLHEP) demonstrated a powerful vocal in all three registers by performing the song "Lie Ciocarlie". Meir Erdauletov (FLNP), Dauren Aznabaev (FLNR) and Kanat Nurlana (BLTP) proved themselves to be truly virtuosos playing traditional Kazakh tunes, the so-called kui, on the dombra.

Martin Buresh (Czech Republic; MLIT) prefaced his performance with a brief story about how he tried to learn the languages of all the countries he happened to visit. To prove it, he sang two songs with a guitar accompaniment - one in French and another one in English.

I was fascinated by the nobility of performing of one of the two magnificent presenters of the concert, Elena Badavi (ICD), who sang the song "Ten Years" in Chinese. She was accompanied by other presenters, Lusine Akopyan (piano) and Alesya Zaripova (violin), both of them tutors of the Music School. (Let me note in brackets: it would be difficult to imagine a priori that I might really like a Chinese song - the melody, rhythm and intonation system are so different from the European ones we are used to listen to. But Wikipedia, as it happened more than once, enlightened me. It turned out that everything was true only in relation to the traditional Chinese music. However, globalization has also embraced pop music in China and on the wave of a creative boom its repertoire began to be enriched in genres by the achievements of Western European and American music).

Shouting "Bravo!" and with thunderous applauses the audience reacted to the charming artistry of Anna Gulyaeva (FLNR), who together with Aleksandr Panasenkov, sang two perhaps the most popular songs of S.Nikitin - "With Music of Vivaldi" and "Brichmulla", as well as her own one - "Spring Mess" with a guitar accompaniment.

Another duet, Maksim Dovbenko (DLNP) and Anastasia Zatsepilo (FLNR) also performed successfully. And after them, the concert was concluded by the thunderous peals of the rock band "People on the Moon" with Zhenya Loboda (UC), Maxim Bulavin (FLNP) and Aleksandr Andreev (BLTP). I pay tribute to their high-quality performance, but to be honest, I am surprised by their dynamic pressure, from which I escaped by plugging my ear with my finger. I swear, so many decibels would fit the stadium but not the relatively small Blokhintsev reading hall. However, the youth in the hall rejoiced, so I do not rule out that this passage will be perceived as an old man's grumbling.

And now about what prompted me to take up a pen - after all, making reports on concerts isn't my thing. The fact is that during the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Institute, I applied to the Directorate with a proposal to create a website, the purpose of which is to get acquainted with the creative heritage of JINR employees. The proposal was approved. The invitation to JINR employees and veterans to take part in filling the website with their performances was published in our newspaper and pasted up in the form of posters in the Laboratories of the Institute. I.E.Leonovich, T.V.Tyupikova, who actively participated in this work and me received a number of applications for participation. The website is in the process of enlarging but unfortunately no offers have been received for the section MUSIC. That is why on 24 March, among the numerous friends and relatives of the performers and just their fans, there was a fan out of necessity. I managed to write down only a small part of the performances on my smartphone: its memory was exhausted.

I am addressing personally the Head of the JINR Social Infrastructure Department A.V.Tamonov. The fact is that, unlike the visual and literary creativity of our employees, in order to capture their musical manifestations, appropriate equipment is needed - a device for video and audio recording, as well as a tripod for it. Blokhintsev Library has been dreaming about it for a long time and its price in the simplest version is quite tolerable. I appeal to you with a request to respond: after all, it will be very disappointing if such bright talents as those that gave us joy this evening will sink into oblivion. And how many such assemblies have been before and will be after!

My main impression from this wonderful evening is that in a difficult time, when even family ties sometimes collapse, the multinational family of JINR employees strive to maintain their unity. This is confirmed not only by the names of the performers, but also by the diversity of the audience, pleasing to the eye and ear: I entered the hall together with a large group of Egyptians and when leaving I heard a lively Romanian speech on the porch.

On behalf of all the visitors, I would like to sincerely thank the participants of the concert and its organizers: the JINR Women's Committee and the JINR International Cooperation Department, the Children's Music School and, of course, the hospitable Blokhintsev Library. It was wonderful - thanks!

And in conclusion, let me return to the topic of our website. I invite you to participate in it or just to get acquainted: it will probably be interesting for you to know that it presents the artistic work of many famous scientists of our Institute and even its directors - paintings by D.I.Blokhintsev, poetry and prose by A.N.Sisakyan, collection of poems by V.A.Matveev. The website is called http://creativescience.jinr.ru/. There are five sections in it - according to the art fields. The works presented in them are preceded by a short story of the authors about themselves. It will help you to learn about the creative activity of the employees of the Institute and will give you the opportunity to comment on each other and also create your own creative circle of communication.

For the JINR employees-performers who want to fill up our website with their performances, I give my address: vardenga@jinr.ru. Surely, this proposal applies to our writers and artists to the same extent.

Genrikh Vardenga