As the fighting in Ukraine continues, We take a musical journey to
Odessa, Ukraine's historic ports city on the Black Sea. It's a personal
vision of a Ukrainian born pianist but also a deeper look at the
city's past and present amid war.
Jeffrey Brown has the story for our arts and Culture Series canvas.
It begins at the historic railroad station entryway to the city,
and you can hear the trains
of ski calls his new album, Odessa and musical walk through a legendary
city.
It was written to honor his father, who was dying of cancer and his
home city. It's an effort to understand
where I'm from what I my roots.
But
It was just a starting point. I think it evolved into something bigger
than that, because then my leader literal journey through my hometown.
Becomes an imaginary journey into the history into collective consciousness
into
You know, the darkest sides of Odessa's history
of ski is a jazz pianist and composer who teaches at the Berklee
College of Music in Boston, where we met recently.
It's also the place he first studied in the U. S. He was born and
raised in Odessa when a Jewish family during the Soviet era and at
15 was the youngest ever student to attend the prestigious Odessa
Conservatory of Music.
Here. He evokes his walks to school as snow fell.
Yeah.
In Ukraine today. The sounds are very different.
Nissa Lasky composed his beast before the Russian invasion began
on February 24th. This was Odessa Soviet ports on the Black Sea.
Odessa has known war before, and one turbulence section portrays
the horrors of World War two.
In Romanian troops under Nazi guidance brutalized the city and its
inhabitants, including the murder of thousands of Jews.
Glovsky, who regularly performs in Ukraine and maintains close ties
to friends and fellow musicians. Their music had a new residents
February 24th.
Changed my life, and I think it changed my life forever. It's just
really before and after for obvious reasons, and then I had to ask
myself.
Is this music still relevant? And I realized, yes, it is because
There is
Enough drama in that story that I created. My drama was
Based on the second World War. Memories of their some
And now we have
Very often same images that we saw from the Second World War. But
now we see them in the color, photography and videography. So when
you're playing them now, you're you're feeling and seeing something
different than you did when you first wrote them.
Absolutely thank God I'm a jazz musician. I get to improvise
and I cannot play without imagining those things myself. I don't
feel those things. You won't be feeling that
This
is a rare mix of classically trained pianist and brilliant jazz improviser
musical Omnivore, for whom different sounds of always flowed together.
He was always one thing. It was this ocean of
Creativity in sound, and it could come from
Q. For Jared, it could come from
Johann Sebastian Bach. It could come from Paul McCartney or Junior
Mitchell. Year. All of them in your music, right? You want You want
me to hear them? I want you to hear them. Yes.
The final section of this ode to Odessa speaks to the flowering that
had been taking place in recent years within an independent and democratic
Ukraine.
Now it to hold new meaning, and I saw it as a sign of Renaissance
as a sign of hope for for for my city.
But of course
After February 24th after these horrible war has started.
I also played this music as a prayer for peace and for my home country.
For Ukraine
from benefit concerts and sales of his new album, Odessa Musical,
walked through a legendary city Madam Messeloff Ski has to date raised
some $200,000 for humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine.
According PBS News Hour I'm Jeffrey Brown at the Berklee College
of Music in Boston.