Artists: 

John Astor, Sergei Klein, Alexandr Kohanovski

Release:

Aguan Alphabet

Release date:

10.06.08

Tracklisting:

Artwork: 

Info:

A couple of words about the artists, who took part in recording this release:

John Astor was born in San Francisco and started to sing and to play music on guitar at the age of 12.

He played classical music on clarinet too and after 2 years he was performing all around San Franciso including such venues like The Matrix, Masonic Auditorium and Fairmont Hotel. Back in 70's he collaborated, performed and recorded music with a lot of prominent artists, such as Cantaremos, Ti-Hi Band, Alice Coltrane, Joe Henderson, he played with It’s A Beautiful Day, Elvin Bishop, Willie Nelson and Lionel Richie. John Astor is currently a member of the Bobby Few Quartet.

At the same time John composes and records his own music in guitar jazz style, but with the unique melody feeling and non-traditional harmonies. Though he plays lots of instruments like bass guitar, alto sax, ukulele and dulcimer, guitar still remains the main one.

In 90's John moves to Hawaii, tours USA and Mexico and in 2000 settles in Paris, where he starts to work on composing soundtracks for movies and performing on a jazz club scene as well as releasing a couple of his solo CD's.

One of his freshest works is "Wave Spirit" (2005) - music for dulcimer solo and an album called "A Song Inside Of A Song" (2006).

Alexandr Kohanovski is a composer and a pianist from Kyiv, Ukraine, also involved in the production of electronic music.

His unique approach to the keyboard instruments combines elements of classical music, ethno jazz and ambient with touching lyrical and melancholical mood.

Founder of  Zukor - Bila Smert' (Sugar - White Death) - in the past a highly important musical project of the ukrainian underground scene.

He also performs as Pankifared in idm-like, electonica style, sometimes collaborating with such ukrainian bands as Foa Hoka, Mr. Skatkoff as well as with various foreign artists. He is the member of ukrainian underground formation Ukr.Tele.Kom (most recently as featured pianist on soundtrack for the show "RELIEF" by Hotel Pro Forma, Denmark).

Alexandr Kohanovski won the Rachmaninov Prize as a performer of jazz and classical music.

He composed many music works for various cultural institutions like Goethe Institute, Institute Francaise and Pro Helvetia, toured Europe and took part in big music and media-art festivals such as Fusion, Brandshof, Offside and many more.

For more than 10 years and until today Kohanovski composes music for the "Vilna Szena" theatre in Kyiv, at the same time making soundtracks for independent movies, music for video art and for TV.

Sergei Klein is a self-taught musician, playing the vargans and bamboo flutes, experimenting with natural and electronic alterations of sound. One of the founders of the Ukr.Tele.Kom formation, who had a wonderful "Compositions And Imrovisations" release last year on on Arterija.

He studied radio broadcasting at the Denver Career Education Center, USA, worked as sound producer and disc jockey for National Public Radio station KUVO 89.3FM the Jazz Oasis.
Later he returns to Ukraine, and starts to work as freelance journalist, publishing his own fanzine on underground culture (1998-2001) as well as the book "God", exhibited art pieces in Ukraine, Russian Federation, Latvia and Bulgaria, and worked as events organizer and designer. As a musician and a DJ he has performed in Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Croatia and Norway.
 

The "Aguan Alphabet" is partly the result of the collective improvisation of three artists, recorded almost within one day in autumn of 2007 in John Astor's apartment when he was living in Kyiv for at least one year. The other part of the release are selected solo tracks by Alexandr Kohanovski. All tracks are compiled and blended together so that (mostly) short piano works of Kohanovski open up a transition from one collective improvisation to another. The release is limited to 50 copies with hand made cover.

The title of the release and the idea to attach these music pieces to the appropriate letters of the nearly extinct Aguan alphabet is by Sergei Klein and here's what he says about it:

"Aguan language and writings belong to the family of Albanian-Armenian descent. In fact, it is transitory and intermediate, out of use and long-lost: only a few scriptures survive, and that's all we have. In Aguan alphabet there are 54 letters, each of them corresponding to a certain sound. There is a bit of a mystery to it, connected with the fact that there are gaps in certain graphemes: i.e. we know pronunciation, but not the symbol, in some cases; in others – quite the opposite: a grapheme survives, while we do not know what the sound of it is. While choosing track titles, we felt appropriate to concentrate exactly on these holes and gaps in the alphabet: the music of Astor, Klein & Kohanovski is ponderous, searching, mysterious, puzzling – a quest for missing pieces in an unfamiliar language of misplaced culture."

Credits:

John Astor: guitars, ukulele, dulcimer

Sergei Klein: vargans, bamboo flutes

Alexandr Kohanovski: software, ukulele, mbira, piano

Everything are collective improvisations of J. Astor, S. Klein and A. Kohanovski, except:

Tracks 1, 4, 5, 8, 10 and 13 are written and perfomed by A. Kohanovski.

Track 11 is written and performed by John Astor.

Tracks 2 and 6 are written and performed by S. Klein, additional guitar on 6 by A. Volusunov.

Additional guitar processed sounds and effects on tracks 2, 7, 12 and 13 by M. Shubski.

Compiled and mixed by Maxim Shubski in 2007.