Itself
Itself: Guidelines
Russian-language print versions of Apraksin Blues are available upon request.
Price per issue $15 (check or cash; price includes domestic or international postage).
Apraksin Blues considers manuscripts in any format — preferably literate — proposals and wishes in any form. We request that submissions be limited to previously unpublished texts.
Apraksin Blues accepts inquiries regarding custom literary translation and editing of Russian and English literary texts.
Apraksin Blues welcomes volunteers. For information on getting involved, contact any of our editorial addresses.
Our Partners
**HOT ISSUE**
AB №34 – In Worlds and Times
In Worlds and Times
AB issue 34 — In Worlds and Times — see it here
* Self-Portrait as a Method of Blues: In Worlds and Times (Blues Mondo). T. Apraksina
“That’s what results in endless blues “
* The Many Faces of Time (Blues Report). J. Manteith
“Eternity is the absence of time”
* Until the grass breaks… K. Razumovskaya
“The chapter is moving away, the stanza is hurrying…”
* The Restoration Period through the Prism of Romanticism. V. Trofimova
“Maturin begins with an unexpected aspect — occultism, belief in witches and witchcraft”
* Japanese Hieroglyphs and Set Theory. A. Kiselyov
“All operations of set theory are easily applicable to the hieroglyph…”
* Cadences of Florence (Photo Gallery). A. “Liverpool”
“Hurray! I’m shooting with no restrictions!”
* Living Logic. V. Lyubeznov
“Thought can only follow the turns and leaps of the first beginnings”
* Matisse’s Stroke in Church Art. A. Palamarchuk
“The very emergence of tradition is impossible without creative search”
* The Model of the University in the Ideas of J.G. Fichte. D. Skachkov
“The goal of the university…is to educate artists of scholarship…”
* The Long Road to Afghanistan. L. Landa
“To see Kabul and not die”
* Echoes of the Wisdom of Sheikh Saadi in the Poetry of K.A. Lipskerov. M. Yahyapour, J. Karimi-Motahhar
“in his oriental poems, he combines the culture and faith of two nations”
* Spanish Rock (continued). La Frontera: On the Border of Good and Evil. O. Romanova
“an anarchist with an open, kind heart”
* The Creative Will (fragments). W.H. Wright
“All art must dominate life”
* Mail
Transcription of Multitudes
AB issue 33 – Transcription of Multitudes – see it here
* Tower (Blues Mondo). Tatyana Apraksina
“from the objectlessness of the inaudible”
* “Because They’re People.” Ella Molochkovetskaya, Olga Romanova
“Since it’s theater within theater, everyone is everyone there”
* Transcribers Anonymous. Tom Cobbe
“suites, sonatas and sets of variations. Oh dear. There go the holidays.”
* You Know Where They Are. John P. Rogers
“time will stop at nothing”
“something like a clock embryo in a shot glass”
* Chromatoplastics. On Color, Form and the Fundamentals of Fine Art. Olga Zemlyanikina
“A spot of color as a tool for conveying the type, character and direction of movement”
* Heeding the Calling. At the Black & Brown Comics Festival (Blues Report). James Manteith
“artists display comics with a blend of mysticism, prophecy and science fiction dubbed ‘Afrofuturism’“
* Eight Cemeteries. Sempa Dordzhe
“His head was in the southwest and his feet were in the northeast, and from them, eight great cemeteries arose in all the worlds”
* Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Blackbirds. Vladimir Verov
“True poetry is not subject to decay”
* Spanish Rock. The Beginning. Olga Romanova
“too rocker for punks and too punk for rockers”
* The Art of Whispering. A New Poetry Collection by Gjekë Marinaj.
“the poet lives in both hemispheres, constantly cultivating literary relationships”
* The Mind Finds Russia…. Translated into Japanese, Persian, Rebrew, Arabic, French, Romanian and Turkish by Anton Kiselyov
* An Old Novel’s Insights and Predictions. Ekaterina Ovcharova “the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in Germany was marked by the appearance of two fundamentally different concepts of the eternal image — Goethe, who crowned the tradition with his two-part play, and Bonaventure, who opened the way to its deconstruction.”
“The hero has no soul to sell, and there’s no one to sell it to.”
* Car Stories. Bill Yake
“then I could see dancing shadows on the asphalt beneath the engine”
* Mail
Worldly Aspect
AB issue 32 – see it here
* The Place of Measure (Blues Mondo). T. Apraksina
* Great and Mighty. What the Old Seer Prophesied. N. Yarygin
* The Artist and the Rich Man (translated by A. Kiselyov)
* Osip Mandelstam and Martiros Saryan. Some Parallels of Artistic Thought. S. Saryan
* Would You Like to Meet Me? G. Caproni (translated by Y. Sventsitskaya)
* And I Sing of Love for You. S. Quasimodo (translated by Y. Sventsitskaya)
* The Musical Experience of the Listener. E. Cho
* The “Vijuaru Kei” of Japanese Rock. E. Molochkovetskaya
* For Soviet Rock. S. Vasiliev
* Step by Step Through the Season with “Blues” (Blues Reports): Keepers of the Postal Fleece. Meetings with Fast-Witted Fan. Punk Defense, Punk Ballet. Boogie-Woogie Biosphere and Ethnogenesis: Lev Gumilyov. Finding a Face Before Sound. J. Manteith
* The Idea of a University. J.H. Newman (excerpts in translation)
* The Essence of the Mind. Lama Gendun Rinpoche (translated by V. Ragimov)
* Stages of Formation in the Verbist Order (interview)
* The Positive Tensor of Curvature. V. Lyubeznov
* Ibn Ezra and His Chess Poem (translated by A. Kiselyov)
POLEMICS SESSION:
* Defending Dostoevsky. N. Orlova
Mail
Nonoctave attunement
AB 31, our first issue since 1998 to be produced and published entirely in St. Petersburg, is imbued with the spirit of reconnecting with one’s beloved milieu.
The issue nonoctavely combines:
* the philosophy of pantheism in art (Sofia Saryan on her renowned grandfather’s worldview), of Tibetan monasticism (a new entry from Vagid Ragimov’s translation of “The Essence of the Ocean of True Meaning”) and of the human being as a project (highlights from the January 2021 seminar held by A. Lvov in our editorial office)
* the surprising songs of Vsevelod Gakkel and his disciple BG — through the eyes and ears of their admirers James Manteith and Andrei Advaitov
* the Decembrists at war, in a panoramic study by Olga Shilova
* inspired ways of measuring time, by Anna Kogan
* an apt, timeless critique of a failed musical, according to Alexander Donskich von Romanov
* the domestic wisdom of Tina Tiffany
* the poetry of Romania (translations by Anton Kiselev, in his first appearance here), Italy (Yulia Sventsitskaya, long known to our readers) and St. Petersburg (a wonderful cycle by Olga Alekseeva, who tragically passed away at the end of last year)
* the non-similarity of realities (according to the editor-in-chief).
All of this is now available in our Russian-language issue! Some can be available in English! If you know Russian, please feel free to help with translations. If you don’t know Russian, you can still help prepare translations — just get in touch to learn more. Meanwhile, please consider learning Russian — the language opens new worlds.
AB in SPb
The Apraksin Blues editorial board is pleased to announce the long-awaited publication of AB №30, “On the Way.” Authors and other interested persons who have seen it before only on the screen can contact the editorial office to obtain copies of the issue.
At the presentation of Apraksin Blues №29
November 9-11, 2019, St. Petersburg, Russia. Editor in chief Tatyana Apraksina and AB supporters in the Apraksin Lane editorial office.
AB Invites!
All-All-All!
Authors, readers, admirers, past and future! And just good smart people!
To everyone who knows us, who know each other, whom we know, whom we can get to know!
Epochs are replaced by epochs, the end of the era of separation becomes the beginning of the era of union.
It’s time to connect — on a new floor, in a new meaning.
Apraksin Blues is looking forward to meeting you!
The doors of the editorial office will be open to all inclined to attend our general meeting
and the St. Petersburg presentation of the new issue, “The Career of Freedom.”
The event will take place three consecutive evenings: 9 (Saturday), 10 (Sunday), 11 (Monday) November starting at 6 pm. .
Editorial address :
St. Petersburg, Apraksin Lane, 3, apt. 3
phone: 310-9640
I will also be happy to meet separately with everyone who so desires, in the second half of any day of the whole next week.
Tatyana Apraksina
Photos from conference on Mike
On April 18, 2017, on Mike Naumenko’s birthday, a conference on him was held in the historic editorial offices of Apraksin Blues on Apraksin Lane in St. Petersburg. The evening’s program included literary readings and sharing of memories. We thank the conference organizer Alexander Donskich von Romanov, office coordinator Elena Starovoitova, and those invited, among them Aleksei Rybin, Rodion, Igor and Lyuda Petrovsky, Natasha Krusanova, Pavel Krusanov, Willie Usov, Vsevolod Gakkel, Pavel Krayev, Igor Gudkov, A. Naslevod, Andrei Tropillo.
Read about Mike on Apraksin Lane here.
“If I were known as a violin bow”
Gregory Korchmar and Tatyana Apraksina, St. Petersburg, 2010
Composer Gregory Korchmar wrote his cantata If I were known as a violin bow in St. Petersburg, Russia, starting the composition in August 2012 and finishing in February 2013. The eight-movement composition, scored for soprano, violin and cello, sets texts from ten poems by a fellow St. Petersburg native, artist and writer Tatyana Apraksina. The texts selected by Korchmar reflect meditations on the metaphysics of music and musical performance. Korchmar’s and Apraksina’s resonance with St. Petersburg’s musical traditions informs the cantata, as do related spiritual and cultural affinities.
Gregory Korchmar, a composer, pianist, harpsichordist and professor who studied under the Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975), has long been a visible exponent of St. Petersburg’s musical culture. He teaches composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and since 2006 has chaired the St. Petersburg Composers Union, having previously assisted the prominent composer Andrei Petrov (1930-2006), his predecessor in that post. For many years, Korchmar has served as the primary organizer for the annual Petersburg Musical Spring festival of contemporary classical music. He is the author of four symphonies and a series of operas, ballets, cantatas, oratorios and other choral and solo vocal works. He is an Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (1996), a laureate of the St. Petersburg government’s prize for work dedicated to the city’s three-hundredth anniversary (2003), and the recipient of a Pushkin Medal for contributions to the development, preservation and proliferation of national cultural traditions.
Tatyana Apraksina’s visual and philosophical investigation of the specifics and spirit of classical music performance was significantly furthered by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, which began to facilitate this direction in her work starting in 1984, while Shostakovich associate Yevgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988) still conducted the ensemble. Major musical and scholarly centers in Russia and abroad have hosted her exhibits and lectures on creativity, artistry and cultural history, themes also explored in her ongoing essay and poetry publications. Collaboration with original members of Shostakovich’s preferred Borodin Quartet, including cellist Valentin Berlinsky (1925-2008), has had a major influence on her thought, as has the noted St. Petersburg violinist and Soloists of Leningrad founder Mikhail Gantvarg, a central muse for her art and writing. Her two jubilee-year memorial portraits of Shostakovich belong to the collection of the St. Petersburg Composers Union, as does her 1996 portrait of the composer’s favorite pupil, Boris Tishschenko (1939-2010), an important ally for her work.
The “voices” and “hands” of these mutual “friends” interweave in the texts and music of Korchmar’s cantata, as does Western and Eastern musical rite’s “frankincense of canon.” Korchmar’s opening movement sets Apraksina’s restatement of a Pythagorean-type creed of musical cosmology. His chronologically last setting, placed at the cantata’s center, gives a pentatonically inflected evocation of the legendary meeting between the sages Confucius and Lao Tse, as imagined in a 1999 poem dedicated by Apraksina to the sinologist Evgeny Torchinov (1956-2003), her professor at the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oriental Studies. The closing movement, “To the Violinist’s Hand,” musically follows the trajectory of “whirlwind ascent” of sound from virtuosically played instruments, with the musical anagrams of Bach and Shostakovich fused in the culminating sonic “communion” envisioned in Apraksina’s 2001 source poem. Interstitial slow and waltz movements seem to extend other lines suggested by late-period Shostakovich, in varied moods of pastoral lyricism (“I discovered my violin…,” “A mountain cello…”), existential starkness (“The measurement for my love’s weight…”) and rhapsody in the “transmutation” of creative immersion in the sublime materials of musical craft (“My friends are notes…,” “Fetish”).
The cantata’s texts, written in anticipation of and during the early stages of a productive sojourn in coastal California, alternately seek to articulate the essence of Apraksina’s known experience of “music culled from altars” of “distinguished stage boards” from a vantage point of “gathering distance” an “ocean” and “continental stage” away from St. Petersburg, while also finding the wild setting’s “wave bows,” “vapor fingers” and “cello range” unlocking further layers of this essence for reporting back to the Old World, to “deliver information to the bureau.” In St. Petersburg, Korchmar responds with music steeped in that place, in the larger heritage of classical music and culture, and in headily transcendent “notes and numbers” sensed as measuring “heaven’s interval” and signifying the “vibration” that reconciles places, times, modes of thought and being for both composer and poet.
James Manteith, also the translator of Apraksina’s poem sequence California Psalms (bilingual edition 2013, Radiolarian) and other works by the author, has prepared an English-language singable rendering of the soprano part for Korchmar’s If I were known as a violin bow cantata, broadening the opportunities for the performance and comprehension of the work beyond Russia.
To inquire about this work’s recording and performance status and availability in its Russian or English versions, please contact apraksinblues@gmail.com.
Tibetan lessons
The historic Apraksin Blues magazine editorial offices in St. Petersburg are hosting regular Tibetan language classes.
(Photos by Elena Starovoitova.)
In Worlds and Times
AB issue 34 — In Worlds and Times — see it here
* Self-Portrait as a Method of Blues: In Worlds and Times (Blues Mondo). T. Apraksina
“That’s what results in endless blues “
* The Many Faces of Time (Blues Report). J. Manteith
“Eternity is the absence of time”
* Until the grass breaks… K. Razumovskaya
“The chapter is moving away, the stanza is hurrying…”
* The Restoration Period through the Prism of Romanticism. V. Trofimova
“Maturin begins with an unexpected aspect — occultism, belief in witches and witchcraft”
* Japanese Hieroglyphs and Set Theory. A. Kiselyov
“All operations of set theory are easily applicable to the hieroglyph…”
* Cadences of Florence (Photo Gallery). A. “Liverpool”
“Hurray! I’m shooting with no restrictions!”
* Living Logic. V. Lyubeznov
“Thought can only follow the turns and leaps of the first beginnings”
* Matisse’s Stroke in Church Art. A. Palamarchuk
“The very emergence of tradition is impossible without creative search”
* The Model of the University in the Ideas of J.G. Fichte. D. Skachkov
“The goal of the university…is to educate artists of scholarship…”
* The Long Road to Afghanistan. L. Landa
“To see Kabul and not die”
* Echoes of the Wisdom of Sheikh Saadi in the Poetry of K.A. Lipskerov. M. Yahyapour, J. Karimi-Motahhar
“in his oriental poems, he combines the culture and faith of two nations”
* Spanish Rock (continued). La Frontera: On the Border of Good and Evil. O. Romanova
“an anarchist with an open, kind heart”
* The Creative Will (fragments). W.H. Wright
“All art must dominate life”
* Mail
Transcription of Multitudes
AB issue 33 – Transcription of Multitudes – see it here
* Tower (Blues Mondo). Tatyana Apraksina
“from the objectlessness of the inaudible”
* “Because They’re People.” Ella Molochkovetskaya, Olga Romanova
“Since it’s theater within theater, everyone is everyone there”
* Transcribers Anonymous. Tom Cobbe
“suites, sonatas and sets of variations. Oh dear. There go the holidays.”
* You Know Where They Are. John P. Rogers
“time will stop at nothing”
“something like a clock embryo in a shot glass”
* Chromatoplastics. On Color, Form and the Fundamentals of Fine Art. Olga Zemlyanikina
“A spot of color as a tool for conveying the type, character and direction of movement”
* Heeding the Calling. At the Black & Brown Comics Festival (Blues Report). James Manteith
“artists display comics with a blend of mysticism, prophecy and science fiction dubbed ‘Afrofuturism’“
* Eight Cemeteries. Sempa Dordzhe
“His head was in the southwest and his feet were in the northeast, and from them, eight great cemeteries arose in all the worlds”
* Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Blackbirds. Vladimir Verov
“True poetry is not subject to decay”
* Spanish Rock. The Beginning. Olga Romanova
“too rocker for punks and too punk for rockers”
* The Art of Whispering. A New Poetry Collection by Gjekë Marinaj.
“the poet lives in both hemispheres, constantly cultivating literary relationships”
* The Mind Finds Russia…. Translated into Japanese, Persian, Rebrew, Arabic, French, Romanian and Turkish by Anton Kiselyov
* An Old Novel’s Insights and Predictions. Ekaterina Ovcharova “the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in Germany was marked by the appearance of two fundamentally different concepts of the eternal image — Goethe, who crowned the tradition with his two-part play, and Bonaventure, who opened the way to its deconstruction.”
“The hero has no soul to sell, and there’s no one to sell it to.”
* Car Stories. Bill Yake
“then I could see dancing shadows on the asphalt beneath the engine”
* Mail
Worldly Aspect
AB issue 32 – see it here
* The Place of Measure (Blues Mondo). T. Apraksina
* Great and Mighty. What the Old Seer Prophesied. N. Yarygin
* The Artist and the Rich Man (translated by A. Kiselyov)
* Osip Mandelstam and Martiros Saryan. Some Parallels of Artistic Thought. S. Saryan
* Would You Like to Meet Me? G. Caproni (translated by Y. Sventsitskaya)
* And I Sing of Love for You. S. Quasimodo (translated by Y. Sventsitskaya)
* The Musical Experience of the Listener. E. Cho
* The “Vijuaru Kei” of Japanese Rock. E. Molochkovetskaya
* For Soviet Rock. S. Vasiliev
* Step by Step Through the Season with “Blues” (Blues Reports): Keepers of the Postal Fleece. Meetings with Fast-Witted Fan. Punk Defense, Punk Ballet. Boogie-Woogie Biosphere and Ethnogenesis: Lev Gumilyov. Finding a Face Before Sound. J. Manteith
* The Idea of a University. J.H. Newman (excerpts in translation)
* The Essence of the Mind. Lama Gendun Rinpoche (translated by V. Ragimov)
* Stages of Formation in the Verbist Order (interview)
* The Positive Tensor of Curvature. V. Lyubeznov
* Ibn Ezra and His Chess Poem (translated by A. Kiselyov)
POLEMICS SESSION:
* Defending Dostoevsky. N. Orlova
Mail
Nonoctave attunement
AB 31, our first issue since 1998 to be produced and published entirely in St. Petersburg, is imbued with the spirit of reconnecting with one’s beloved milieu.
The issue nonoctavely combines:
* the philosophy of pantheism in art (Sofia Saryan on her renowned grandfather’s worldview), of Tibetan monasticism (a new entry from Vagid Ragimov’s translation of “The Essence of the Ocean of True Meaning”) and of the human being as a project (highlights from the January 2021 seminar held by A. Lvov in our editorial office)
* the surprising songs of Vsevelod Gakkel and his disciple BG — through the eyes and ears of their admirers James Manteith and Andrei Advaitov
* the Decembrists at war, in a panoramic study by Olga Shilova
* inspired ways of measuring time, by Anna Kogan
* an apt, timeless critique of a failed musical, according to Alexander Donskich von Romanov
* the domestic wisdom of Tina Tiffany
* the poetry of Romania (translations by Anton Kiselev, in his first appearance here), Italy (Yulia Sventsitskaya, long known to our readers) and St. Petersburg (a wonderful cycle by Olga Alekseeva, who tragically passed away at the end of last year)
* the non-similarity of realities (according to the editor-in-chief).
All of this is now available in our Russian-language issue! Some can be available in English! If you know Russian, please feel free to help with translations. If you don’t know Russian, you can still help prepare translations — just get in touch to learn more. Meanwhile, please consider learning Russian — the language opens new worlds.
AB in SPb
The Apraksin Blues editorial board is pleased to announce the long-awaited publication of AB №30, “On the Way.” Authors and other interested persons who have seen it before only on the screen can contact the editorial office to obtain copies of the issue.
At the presentation of Apraksin Blues №29
November 9-11, 2019, St. Petersburg, Russia. Editor in chief Tatyana Apraksina and AB supporters in the Apraksin Lane editorial office.
AB Invites!
All-All-All!
Authors, readers, admirers, past and future! And just good smart people!
To everyone who knows us, who know each other, whom we know, whom we can get to know!
Epochs are replaced by epochs, the end of the era of separation becomes the beginning of the era of union.
It’s time to connect — on a new floor, in a new meaning.
Apraksin Blues is looking forward to meeting you!
The doors of the editorial office will be open to all inclined to attend our general meeting
and the St. Petersburg presentation of the new issue, “The Career of Freedom.”
The event will take place three consecutive evenings: 9 (Saturday), 10 (Sunday), 11 (Monday) November starting at 6 pm. .
Editorial address :
St. Petersburg, Apraksin Lane, 3, apt. 3
phone: 310-9640
I will also be happy to meet separately with everyone who so desires, in the second half of any day of the whole next week.
Tatyana Apraksina
Photos from conference on Mike
On April 18, 2017, on Mike Naumenko’s birthday, a conference on him was held in the historic editorial offices of Apraksin Blues on Apraksin Lane in St. Petersburg. The evening’s program included literary readings and sharing of memories. We thank the conference organizer Alexander Donskich von Romanov, office coordinator Elena Starovoitova, and those invited, among them Aleksei Rybin, Rodion, Igor and Lyuda Petrovsky, Natasha Krusanova, Pavel Krusanov, Willie Usov, Vsevolod Gakkel, Pavel Krayev, Igor Gudkov, A. Naslevod, Andrei Tropillo.
Read about Mike on Apraksin Lane here.
“If I were known as a violin bow”
Gregory Korchmar and Tatyana Apraksina, St. Petersburg, 2010
Composer Gregory Korchmar wrote his cantata If I were known as a violin bow in St. Petersburg, Russia, starting the composition in August 2012 and finishing in February 2013. The eight-movement composition, scored for soprano, violin and cello, sets texts from ten poems by a fellow St. Petersburg native, artist and writer Tatyana Apraksina. The texts selected by Korchmar reflect meditations on the metaphysics of music and musical performance. Korchmar’s and Apraksina’s resonance with St. Petersburg’s musical traditions informs the cantata, as do related spiritual and cultural affinities.
Gregory Korchmar, a composer, pianist, harpsichordist and professor who studied under the Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975), has long been a visible exponent of St. Petersburg’s musical culture. He teaches composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and since 2006 has chaired the St. Petersburg Composers Union, having previously assisted the prominent composer Andrei Petrov (1930-2006), his predecessor in that post. For many years, Korchmar has served as the primary organizer for the annual Petersburg Musical Spring festival of contemporary classical music. He is the author of four symphonies and a series of operas, ballets, cantatas, oratorios and other choral and solo vocal works. He is an Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (1996), a laureate of the St. Petersburg government’s prize for work dedicated to the city’s three-hundredth anniversary (2003), and the recipient of a Pushkin Medal for contributions to the development, preservation and proliferation of national cultural traditions.
Tatyana Apraksina’s visual and philosophical investigation of the specifics and spirit of classical music performance was significantly furthered by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, which began to facilitate this direction in her work starting in 1984, while Shostakovich associate Yevgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988) still conducted the ensemble. Major musical and scholarly centers in Russia and abroad have hosted her exhibits and lectures on creativity, artistry and cultural history, themes also explored in her ongoing essay and poetry publications. Collaboration with original members of Shostakovich’s preferred Borodin Quartet, including cellist Valentin Berlinsky (1925-2008), has had a major influence on her thought, as has the noted St. Petersburg violinist and Soloists of Leningrad founder Mikhail Gantvarg, a central muse for her art and writing. Her two jubilee-year memorial portraits of Shostakovich belong to the collection of the St. Petersburg Composers Union, as does her 1996 portrait of the composer’s favorite pupil, Boris Tishschenko (1939-2010), an important ally for her work.
The “voices” and “hands” of these mutual “friends” interweave in the texts and music of Korchmar’s cantata, as does Western and Eastern musical rite’s “frankincense of canon.” Korchmar’s opening movement sets Apraksina’s restatement of a Pythagorean-type creed of musical cosmology. His chronologically last setting, placed at the cantata’s center, gives a pentatonically inflected evocation of the legendary meeting between the sages Confucius and Lao Tse, as imagined in a 1999 poem dedicated by Apraksina to the sinologist Evgeny Torchinov (1956-2003), her professor at the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oriental Studies. The closing movement, “To the Violinist’s Hand,” musically follows the trajectory of “whirlwind ascent” of sound from virtuosically played instruments, with the musical anagrams of Bach and Shostakovich fused in the culminating sonic “communion” envisioned in Apraksina’s 2001 source poem. Interstitial slow and waltz movements seem to extend other lines suggested by late-period Shostakovich, in varied moods of pastoral lyricism (“I discovered my violin…,” “A mountain cello…”), existential starkness (“The measurement for my love’s weight…”) and rhapsody in the “transmutation” of creative immersion in the sublime materials of musical craft (“My friends are notes…,” “Fetish”).
The cantata’s texts, written in anticipation of and during the early stages of a productive sojourn in coastal California, alternately seek to articulate the essence of Apraksina’s known experience of “music culled from altars” of “distinguished stage boards” from a vantage point of “gathering distance” an “ocean” and “continental stage” away from St. Petersburg, while also finding the wild setting’s “wave bows,” “vapor fingers” and “cello range” unlocking further layers of this essence for reporting back to the Old World, to “deliver information to the bureau.” In St. Petersburg, Korchmar responds with music steeped in that place, in the larger heritage of classical music and culture, and in headily transcendent “notes and numbers” sensed as measuring “heaven’s interval” and signifying the “vibration” that reconciles places, times, modes of thought and being for both composer and poet.
James Manteith, also the translator of Apraksina’s poem sequence California Psalms (bilingual edition 2013, Radiolarian) and other works by the author, has prepared an English-language singable rendering of the soprano part for Korchmar’s If I were known as a violin bow cantata, broadening the opportunities for the performance and comprehension of the work beyond Russia.
To inquire about this work’s recording and performance status and availability in its Russian or English versions, please contact apraksinblues@gmail.com.
Tibetan lessons
The historic Apraksin Blues magazine editorial offices in St. Petersburg are hosting regular Tibetan language classes.
(Photos by Elena Starovoitova.)
**HOT ISSUE**
AB №34 – In Worlds and Times
Self-Portrait as a Method of Blues: In Worlds and Times (Blues Mondo). T. Apraksina
“That’s what results in endless blues “
The Many Faces of Time (Blues Report). J. Manteith
“Eternity is the absence of time”
Until the grass breaks… K. Razumovskaya
“The chapter is moving away, the stanza is hurrying…”
The Restoration Period through the Prism of Romanticism. V. Trofimova
“Maturin begins with an unexpected aspect — occultism, belief in witches and witchcraft”
Japanese Hieroglyphs and Set Theory. A. Kiselyov
“All operations of set theory are easily applicable to the hieroglyph…”
Cadences of Florence (Photo Gallery). A. “Liverpool”
“Hurray! I’m shooting with no restrictions!”
Living Logic. V. Lyubeznov
“Thought can only follow the turns and leaps of the first beginnings”
Matisse’s Stroke in Church Art. A. Palamarchuk
“The very emergence of tradition is impossible without creative search”
The Model of the University in the Ideas of J.G. Fichte. D. Skachkov
“The goal of the university…is to educate artists of scholarship…”
The Long Road to Afghanistan. L. Landa
“To see Kabul and not die”
Echoes of the Wisdom of Sheikh Saadi in the Poetry of K.A. Lipskerov. M. Yahyapour, J. Karimi-Motahhar
“in his oriental poems, he combines the culture and faith of two nations”
Spanish Rock (continued). La Frontera: On the Border of Good and Evil. O. Romanova
“an anarchist with an open, kind heart”
The Creative Will (fragments). W.H. Wright
“All art must dominate life”
***
The Age of Blues
AB issue 34 — In Worlds and Times — see it here
* Self-Portrait as a Method of Blues: In ...
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AB issue 33 - Transcription of Multitudes - see it here
* Tower (Blues Mondo). Tatyana Apraksina
“from the objectlessness of ...
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AB issue 32 - see it here
* The Place of Measure (Blues Mondo). T. Apraksina
* Great and Mighty. What ...
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AB 31, our first issue since 1998 to be produced and published entirely in St. Petersburg, is imbued with the ...
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The Apraksin Blues editorial board is pleased to announce the long-awaited publication of AB №30, "On the Way." Authors and ...
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All-All-All!
Authors, readers, admirers, past and future! And just good smart people!
To everyone who knows us, who know each other, ...
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Its BILLBOARD
for gourmets
Feb. 12, 2025: Book presentation, “Mike Naumenko: Songs, Poems and Other Texts”
February 12 | Wednesday | 7 pm
Book presentation, “Mike Naumenko: Songs, Poems and Other Texts”
AST Publishing House, 2025
Compilation and commentary – Igor “Isha” Petrovsky
Cover – Andrey “Willie” Usov
House of the Book | Nevsky Prospekt, 28
Dec. 14, 18: Two SPb concerts by James Manteith
December 14 | Saturday | 20:00: “Songs of Mountains and Cities” | Art-center “MITKI”
Marat Street, 36/38, apt. 120, code 4318B
1 – Host Mitya Shagin and James before the Mitki concert
2 – Audience at the Mitki concert
3 – During the Mitki concert
4 – During the Mitki concert
5 – After the Mitki concert
6 – James on Marat Street after the Mitki concert
7 – Tatyana Apraksina on Marat Street after the Mitki concert
Concert review by Frau Koroleva (Telegram: @fraukorolevaa):
We visited the Mitki on Saturday and met a poet, musician and translator from friendly America, James Manteith. (https://m.vk.com/wall-79098291_8913)
Near James’s house in California grow grapes, and sitting under grape leaves, he sings about what he skillfully fishes out of space.
The occasion for literary and musical reflection can be a meeting with a friend, a loved one’s new dress, neglected Chinese books or, say, Borodinsky bread (https://jamesmanteith.bandcamp.com/track/baker-an-order-for-borodinsky)! To be honest, I don’t eat Borodinsky bread very much, but Americans eat even less. Yet James liked this bread so much in Russia that now he orders it from Brooklyn and even dedicated a song to it. And the song turns out to be not just about bread and a touching attachment to strange Russian habits. If in the States the bread is puffy and “lightweight,” then Borodinsky embodies a stronghold, a robust, unbreakable core. The song even contains these lyrics:
Tell the miller,
Mill the kernels whole,
Heavy pillars
Will uplift our souls.
I especially liked the part about heavy pillars uplifting our souls.
December 18 | Wednesday | 19:00: “Under Grape Leaves” | Art-space mArs
Field of Mars 3
Tickets: https://litsa-event.timepad.ru/event/3159246/
#Mars_квартирник #Заповедник_андеграунда
From the mArs Art Space concert announcement:
James Manteith is a musician, writer and expert on Russian culture. He studied Russian at Middlebury College and St. Petersburg State University. For over 25 years, James has collaborated with the interdisciplinary magazine Apraksin Blues and its editor, the artist and writer Tatyana Apraksina, which has allowed him to delve deeper into the Leningrad underground.
James translates songs by Russian authors such as Mike Naumenko into English. He is also a translator of Tatyana Apraksina’s poetry and prose, composes music based on her poems, and dedicates songs to her and her work. A week ago, mArs hosted Apraksina’s exhibition “Preamble” (https://t.me/artspacemars/4670) and her performance of the poetry cycle “California Psalms” (https://t.me/artspacemars/4739), which Manteith has also translated into English.
In his songs, James combines the influence of such legends as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Beatles with the spirit of informal Leningrad. His work is a melodic, poetic immersion in images and moods associated with life in nature and with an understanding of urban realities.
We invite you to a creative evening filled with music, poetry and deep reflections on human connections.
Video from the concert: Encore performance of James’s translation of Mike Naumenko’s “Call Me Early in the Morning”
Songs and lyrics by James Manteith: https://jamesmanteith.bandcamp.com/
“California Psalms” concert Dec. 5, 2024
“California Psalms” | a poetry house concert with writer and artist Tatyana Apraksina at mArs Art Space
Recording from the reading: https://vkvideo.ru/video-79098291_456239601
On the sidelines of Tatyana Apraksina’s art exhibit “Preamble” (https://t.me/artspacemars/4641) as part of the joint project “Underground Reserve” with the Etalon group, mArs Art Space will host an evening of poetry, representing the most complete presentation of the artist’s cycle California Psalms in Russia to date.
Apraksina’s Psalms were published in the magazine Neva in 2005 and 2007, then as a separate book in the United States in 2013. Spoken-word performances of the cycle in the USA, Germany, Israel and Russia have contributed to its reputation.
In 2023, Apraksina received the Babel Prize for Literature, including for this work. Recently, a new edition of California Psalms was published in the U.S., dedicated to the cycle’s 25th anniversary and including its updated translation.
The evening’s guests will have an opportunity to get acquainted with the book and purchase copies.
December 5 | Thu | 7 p.m.
Field of Mars (Marsovo Polye) 3
Tickets (https://litsa-event.timepad.ru/event/3140568/)
Exhibit Dec. 2-7, 2024
mArs Art Space announces:
“Preamble,” an exhibit of art by Tatyana Apraksina, opens on Monday, December 2, at 6:00 pm in the mArs Art Space gallery in St. Petersburg.
The artist’s first hometown exhibit after twenty-five-year pause will present works from the 80s and 90s — art with roots in a bygone era and which forms a preamble to a new search, a foundation for further discoveries.
The exhibit brings together works from various cycles by the artist. For instance, there are views of architecture’s casual side, the back lanes of St. Petersburg, from a series of drawings of courtyard scenes called “Gaze from Within.” Many spots depicted in the cycle no longer look the same or have even disappeared.
Another direction presented in the exhibit relates to the world of classical music, whose imagery offered Apraksina an ideal metaphor for spiritual development and realization. The paintings highlight the profound meaning of the human spirit seeking higher awareness.
Co-organized with the Etalon group as part of the joint project “Underground Reserve,” which focuses on the legacy of underground cultural movements in Leningrad-St. Peterburg, the exhibit will last one week.
December 2 to 7
Daily 12 p.m.-7 p.m.
Free admission
Field of Mars 3
Tatyana Apraksina began her career as an artist and connoisseur of culture in 1974, opening her home for participants in Leningrad’s underground cultural movements to communicate freely in an environment of mutual inspiration and support.
Classical music
In it, Apraksina found an ideal metaphor for spiritual development and realization. Her theme is always implicitly the evolutionary development of consciousness. “Model of the Mass,” “Time of Fruits,” “Weather Forecasts” and “The Quill of Aquinas” — paintings that seem to lead beyond the existing material context into the realm of abstract imagery — show the human spirit seeking higher awareness.
Tatyana Apraksina
- started as an artist and connoisseur of culture in 1974, was part of the Leningrad underground;
- in 1984 decided to live as an independent artist, devoting her attention for many years to the topic of classical music;
- has exhibited in Leningrad-Petersburg, Moscow and abroad;
- since the early 90s has written a range of works of literature and philosophy;
- since 1995 has been editor-in-chief of the magazine Apraksin Blues;
- since 1999 has developed bases for creative activity in America;
- in 2023 received the Babel Prize for Literature.
mArs Art Space reports:
The mArs gallery was filled yesterday with warmth and light from the paintings of Tatyana Apraksina at the opening of an exhibit of her works from the 80-90s, “Preamble,” part of “Underground Reserve,” a project jointly supported by the Etalon group.
Tatyana began her creative path in Leningrad during the heyday of underground rock culture. Her immediate circle included musicians from the groups Aquarium and Zoopark. The girl from Apraksin Lane served as a muse and co-author for the future rock idols of the 80s.
For just one week in St. Petersburg, you can see where it all began, how the preamble was written for Tatyana Apraksina’s artistic and creative development. First of all, there are paintings from her early series of monochrome city landscapes — abandoned buildings and courtyards, the view from the window of her studio at the Philharmonic.
Another significant part of the exhibit represents the creative period when the artist’s attention shifted from alternative aesthetics to classical music. The images of musicians, instruments, and notes combine an abstract style and a background of cosmic landscapes. The brushstrokes and dynamics of the figures resemble the movement of sound waves you can “hear” their oscillation when immersed in the painting.
For Tatyana, this is an important and long-awaited exhibit, when she can finally show her works in her hometown without censorship and oppression. Find time to visit and see this vibrant piece of the heritage of the Leningrad underground.
“Preamble”
December 2-7 | daily 12 p.m.-7 p.m.
Field of Mars 3 | free admission
On Thursday, December 5, we invite you to get to know Tatyana as a poet and listen to her poetry cycle “California Psalms.”
SEMINAR, December 5, 2023
“Apraksin Blues” invites everyone to a seminar
5 December (Tuesday)
ANDREI PATKUL,
author of the book The Idea of Philosophy as a Science of Being in the Fundamental Ontology of Martin Heidegger. SPb: Nauka, 2020
TEMPORALITY AS THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE IN THE ONTOLOGY OF M. HEIDEGGER
The seminar begins at 7 pm
Doors open at 6:30 pm
The editorial office address is the same:
Apraksin per., d. 3, kv. 3
The editorial office phone is the same:
310-96-40
Also: +7-981-015-37-21
Seminar November 25, 2023
“Apraksin Blues” invites everyone to a seminar
CYCLE “HOW THE TEACHINGS SEE THINGS”
25 November (Saturday)
VAGID RAGIMOV
THE PATH OF SELF-AWARENESS IN TIBETAN BUDDHISM
The System of Mahamudra
The seminar begins at 7 pm
Doors open at 6:30 pm
The editorial office address is the same:
Apraksin per., d. 3, kv. 3
The editorial office phone is the same:
310-96-40
Also: +7-981-015-37-21
SEMINAR
November 18 2023 (Saturday)
MARINA PAVLOVNA CHERNYSHEVA
THE NATURE OF TIME
Biological time
The author will try to answer the questions: What is TIME? Just a parameter characterizing the sequence and duration of events? Or something else — for instance, a type of energy that affects all living things, like light and mechanical energy, etc.? Is there evidence of this?
The seminar begins at 7 pm
Doors open at 6:30 pm
The editorial office address is the same:
Apraksin per., d. 3, kv. 3
The editorial office phone is the same:
310-96-40
Also: +7-981-015-37-21
Vsevolod Gakkel and His Songs
Vsevolod Gakkel and His Songs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vsevolod_Gakkel
November 17, 2022 (Thursday)
8:00 pm,
Doors open at 7:30 pm
Apraksin per., d. 3, kv. 4
Phone:
310 9640,
+7 981 015 3721
Gate code #1469
All are invited!
Donations to musicians are welcome.
MUSICAL ZEN
Thursday, May 12, 2022
Musical Zen
Contemporary music with a Japanese accent
Vladimir SHULYAKOVSKY (violin)
Nikita CHASOVNIKOV (shakuhachi)
Doors open at 7:30 pm
Concert starts at 8:00 8:00 pm
Apraksin pereulok, d. 3, kv. 4 (gate code #1469)
Phone numbers: 310-9640
(NEW!!) +7-981-015-3721
Donations for the musicians are welcome
Advance announcement of the Association of Historical Psychology’s next conference
The conference will take place in St. Petersburg and remotely in mid-May, 2022.
The working language of the conference is Russian.
The theme of the conference is “The Petrine Era” (and everything that might bear some relation to it).
Articles (six pages with 1.5 line spacing) should be submitted around mid-March (the anthologies collecting these articles come out before the conferences).
More information will follow.
Questions may be sent to the AB editorial address.
Translations Department
- Echoes of Influence: New Edition of Mike’s Texts Includes Translations of His Songs
January 18, 2025
Echoes of Influence: New Edition of Mike’s Texts Includes Translations of His Songs I’m excited to share some great translation news from late 2024, carrying over into early 2025: the major Moscow publishing house AST has released a new book in the ser…
Read more - Highlights of 2023 in the AB Translation Department
January 7, 2024
The past year has given many reasons for gratitude and hope in various areas of the Apraksin Blues Translation Department’s engagement with literature and literary translation. Some events I’m pleased to share word of include: – Taking part in publishi…
Read more - The Encyclopedia of “Sweet N”
December 19, 2021
The Encyclopedia of “Sweet N”: James Manteith’s presentation from the 50th International Scholarly Conference of the V.I. Startsev International Association of Historical Psychology — Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Fall of the Soviet Union…
Read more - In Support of Evolution: Boogie-Woogie Thinking
November 24, 2021
Back in St. Petersburg by the beginning of November 2021, AB’s editors immediately found many opportunities to assess current attitudes toward culture. At the 5th Cultural Congress, in which we took part, we encountered the opinion that the era of the…
Read more - Summer Report: Love and Attentiveness
June 22, 2021
Summer has arrived. According to Far Eastern traditions, it’s now a horse month, during which the sages advise to take special care to curb all manifestations of power now faced by and available to many. Our authors continue to work or rest as b…
Read more - Robert Monteith: A Knight for Peace
May 27, 2021
(English translation of a May 17 lecture for the International Association of Historical Psychology conference “Societal Atmosphere on the Eve of the Wars of the 19th and 20th Centuries: Historical and Psychological Aspects”) — James Manteith (A…
Read more - Long Echoes of Contrarian Crusades
May 27, 2021
Presenting on Peacemaker Robert Monteith in St. Petersburg via California — James Manteith (Apraksin Blues, Mundus Artium Press) In the wee hours of one morning in May 2021, it was my privilege to have a chance to give a remote Russian-la…
Read more - How AB met the New Year in St. Petersburg for the first time in 22 years
January 19, 2021
There’s no tree to be found, only fake ones or bunched branches. But just before New Year’s, a man appears on Garden Street with beautiful real trees brought from the Volosov region. The Haymarket tree fair at is closed due to the pandemic. AB c…
Read more - Voices in the Petersburg Desert
December 18, 2020
For obvious reasons, many have voiced surprise that we, AB editors, decided to make an attempt to come to St. Petersburg in 2020. We were also surprised, and even more surprised it’s happened. We already had enough challenges in 2020: in addition to ou…
Read more - Arrival!
November 23, 2020
AB’s editor-in-chief and translation editor will be in St. Petersburg through early 2021. The phone number of the St. Petersburg editorial office is as before: +7 (812) 310-96-40. The Editors apraksinblues@gmail.com
Read more - Distance Learning
July 4, 2020
Now, with the release of Apraksin Blues №30, “On the Way,” another crucial phase begins — the stage of readers’ time with the issue, authors’ mindfulness toward each other, and discussion of what it’s all about. For the AB Translations Department, ther…
Read more - A beautiful chord: AB in St. Petersburg plays on
December 14, 2019
What might be said about the time spent by AB’s editors in St. Petersburg after the presentation of issue 29? Perhaps that it was a time of deepening relationships, joint initiatives and expectations. Let’s review some aspects of this deepening. First,…
Read more - Rapid development for AB’s physical existence in St. Petersburg
November 13, 2019
Events of recent days hint at a new cycle of development. AB has again made the crossing from California to St. Petersburg. Less than a day after arrival, Tatyana Apraksina managed to reopen a space and sit down to work at her desk in the magazine’s hi…
Read more - “Freedom” declared in Petersburg
November 2, 2019
by contributing translation editor James Manteith Photo: Irina Serpuchyonok Just a few days remain until the planned presentation, in St. Petersburg, of the latest issue of Apraksin Blues, №29, “The Career of Freedom.” As in 2015, for the presentation…
Read more - Preparing for St. Petersburg
October 31, 2019
What needs translation, in this case and maybe always, is reality.
Read more