Cultural Events
Musician Taught and Performed During Uzbekistan Visit (02/28/2009)
American contemporary music composer and performer Demetrius Spaneas performed pieces he wrote to accompany movies by an Uzbek filmmaker, led master classes, lectured and jammed with local jazz ensembles during a recent visit to Uzbekistan.
His trip to Tashkent, Bukhara and Samarkand in February was Spaneas’ third visit to Uzbekistan since 2007, and the latest in a series of visits to Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Many of these tours, including the recent one in Uzbekistan, have been sponsored by the U.S. State Department as part of its cultural exchange programs.
On Feb. 25, Spaneas was the featured composer and performer at the annual Black Box Music and Vision Festival at the Ilkhom Theater in Tashkent. He performed two scores he had composed to accompany films by Uzbek filmmaker Sukhrob Nazimov. He and the Omnibus Ensemble performed another of his scores to a movie by Greek filmmaker Eri Skyrgianni. He said he felt the performance was a great success, and that it was an honor to work with the Ilkhom Theater and Omnibus Ensemble, artists whom he called “wonderfully gifted people who are doing tremendous work.”
In Bukhara, he played a concert organized by the Bukhara State Music College with pianist Obid Jumaev and his band “Silk Road.” Popular pianist Edward Musaelyan helped set up a concert with Spaneas at the Blues Café club in Samarkand.
Back in Tashkent, Spaneas led a master class for about 200 students and teachers at Tashkent Music College. The class and discussions focused on composition and playing wind instruments, and he answered questions about views on music and life as a professional musician.
Spaneas, a native of Massachusetts, plays various wind instruments including saxophone, clarinet and flute. He is a well known composer who has taught at Harvard University, at the Tanglewood Music and Jazz Festivals, and at many other venues. He is on the music faculty at Northeastern and Suffolk universities, and is composer-in-residence for the Bay Area Chamber Symphony.
Spaneas indicated that he felt that many of the performances on this trip were great successes, and that he was glad he had the chance to play with the musicians in Bukhara and Samarkand. For him, the trip was about communicating ideas, and he plans to return to Uzbekistan in the future.
“We can only gain from this,” he said of the artistic dialogue. “We can only evolve as souls by learning from each other.”