When Shaina Anand, curator of the New Media segment at the Jio Mami 18th Mumbai Film Festival with Star, found Vitala Tkachuk’s soundtrack on his YouTube channel, she wrote to him immediately. “When she told me the idea of The Vitaliy Tkachuk Quartet playing live music to Man with A Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov, I thought it was a great idea. The execution of the idea was also top notch,” says the musician.
The Vitaliy Tkachuk Quartet from Ukraine, comprises Tkachuk as guitarist and composer, drummer Alex Fantaev, Egor Gavrilenko on bass and Michael Balog on the saxophone.
The music for the restored silent film was composed by Tkachuk for the Mute Nights festival in 2010 (find out where it is?). And the music has always been warmly received by audiences all over. “While preparing for Mumbai, I heard that recording many times,” the frontman recalls. “After the last chord, there was thunderous applause and it was the same in Mumbai. That shows that there are many similarities in how people appreciate live music in Ukraine and India.”
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Balog concurs adding that music generally has two kinds of audience. The first is open and doesn’t shy away from showing their emotions. The second, however, is slightly more aristocratic; while equally enjoying the music, they aren’t very expressive. “India, like Ukraine, has a very open and enthusiastic audience,” says Balog about their experience performing in the city. “The soundtrack was supposed to be non-stop but people started clapping so we stopped playing to give them time to applaud.”
The band, who also recently performed a gig at Bandra nightspot, Bonobo says the show was incredible. “We mostly played modern, electronic music and people loved that too. You cannot amaze people in Europe or USA by playing jazz music. Here in India, people can appreciate it because it is unusual for them,” said Tkachuk, who is no stranger to India, having studied music for many months with Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia.
“In fact, the four of us just came from a lesson from my Guruji, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia and everybody is very impressed. Michael [Balog] already bought a bansuri and wants to study it. This music is more deep and spiritual than [what] we are used to,” shares Tkachuk.
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After studying with Chaurasia, Tkachuk began to hear music differently. “My musical ear has developed a lot. Guruji is such a person that you can learn not only music but even life lessons from him. As he says music is religion and his temple. He is the greatest musician I’ve met in my life so far.”
Ironically, despite having studied music here, Tkachuk never imagined coming to India with his own band one day.
The one thing the improvising jazz musicians would’ve liked was to have played more than once during the film festival. “At parties we met so many people, who said they missed it because we played only once,” said Tkachuk. Given the warm response the quartet received, they can’t wait to return. “We’d definitely want to come back and do something here, maybe even write music for an Indian film,” emphasised Tkachuk.
Here in India, people can appreciate [jazz music] because it is unusual for them,”
Vitaliy Tkachuk
Guitarist, The Vitaliy Tkachuk Quartet