Makar Kashitsyn - Jazz Animals (2019)

A new (even the newest) wave of Russian jazz, the future of Russian jazz - none of these high-profile definitions will seem like empty hype after meeting with saxophonist Makar Kashitsyn’s album Jazz Animals. The creativity of the composer's decisions and the level of performing skills of the young alt-saxophonist in this debut work speak for themselves. And he is only nineteen years old!

Makar Kashitsyn is a Muscovite. Back in 2017, when he was only seventeen, respectively, he became a laureate of the Gnesin Jazz competition and received the Grand Prix of the festival "Children's Jazz Triumph". At the same time, during a performance in one of the Moscow clubs of the American alt-saxophonist Vincent Herring, assisted by Russian pianist Alexei Podymkin, Makar and Vincent met in person (before that Vincent had consulted Makar on Skype), and, at the invitation of the American, Kashitsyn went to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music, where Herring teaches. Of course, Makar made a lot of useful acquaintances in the jazz capital of the world. In June 2018, with a wealth of new knowledge and skills after a year of study at MSM, Kashitsyn took the first prize at the international saxophonists competition in Yekaterinburg. Makar’s partner in one of the Russian concert tours, drummer Sasha Mashin inspired Kashitsyn to record the album and became the producer of this project.

The Jazz Animals album will be released at the end of September this year under the logo of Rainy Days Records, also a very young label from St. Petersburg. The main focus of its publishing policy was made by the joint projects of Russian and foreign jazz musicians. Jazz Animals is ideally suited to such a program. Two American musicians took part in the recording: trumpeter Josh Evans, who constantly plays in the Christian McBride quartet, and tenor saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, a graduate of the Brubeck Institute and a very successful musician, also young by jazz standards, but, compared to Kashitsyn, a real "bison" (he will be thirty this September). On the Russian side, Makar’s partners also became young and talented performers - the aforementioned Mashin, guitarist Alexei Polubabkin, bassist Makar Novikov and the only veteran in this company, pianist Alexei Podymkin. The representative of the Dutch jazz school, vocalist Hiske Oysterwijk also took part in a number of tracks.

Of the seven large, detailed compositions of the album (not one shorter than six minutes of sound), five were composed by Kashitsyn himself, and one play was written by Lefkowitz-Brown and another Russian musician, Nikita Mochalin, the author of several arrangements in this project. The opening track opens the title track with a duet of two saxophones and a tasty bass part from Novikov. Going To Ekaterinburg Kashitsyn composed in his time specially for the contest in this Ural city, the contest that he won. In the landscape version of this very "hot" play, rhythm is very good, especially Podymkin and Mashin, and Makar Kashitsyn and Ched Lefkowitz-Brown again play brightly. After the Going To Ekaterinburg drive, the lyrical play of the ballad plan Confession looks like a contrasting and very pleasant shower, where, along with the viola Kashitsyna, the Evans trumpet sounds beautifully. I can not objectively evaluate Our Song, the longest piece of the album (thirteen and a half minutes) - I really like the blues, and Kashitsyn here also effectively balances the voice of his saxophone with electronic “gadgets”: for me this is the best composition of the album. In the final tracks, you can also appreciate the skill of the Dutch vocalist: both in the skate version (in Time To Forget, Polubabkin’s guitar is good here) and vocals with lyrics (Phone Call). In a word, more than an hour of sounding an album flies in an instant - and you guess who is to blame! After such a debut, it will be very interesting to hear the next work of Makar Kashitsyn - he “lifted the bar” high!