What does Moscow sound like?

October 24 at the cinema “October” will premiere a very interesting film “City of Music”.

Have you ever thought about how Moscow sounds? How does it sound to outsiders? For a foreigner? After all, each city has its own sound and noise range. Whoever spent the night at least once, for example, in the center of Cairo, was probably dumbfounded by the endless number of car horns of various tonalities that never ceased in the night, so unusual for our ears. And the same night Yalta is the sound of the sea merging into one sound, the breakthrough sounds of the saxophone under the starry sky, the incendiary rhythms of discos and the vocals of open areas. And also the lively shamanic sound of Gershwin performed by the quartet, which traditionally plays on the embankment…

And what does our Moscow sound like?

… The Hermitage Garden, children’s laughter, the Moscow metro, fountains in Gorky Park, the noise of evening gatherings at the Patriarch’s – all these sounds did not escape and were recorded by the recorder of the British composer Dan Baxter, who was offered an unusual adventure by the authors of the City of Music project. An adventure at the intersection of the creative approach and the musical background of the hero himself: to record the sound of Moscow and create the music of the city on this basis. Moreover, the director of the film, Peter Keleptrishvili, limited the Briton to a specific period – for everything about everything – a week.

Dan recorded music wherever he heard it. Even if it was the noise of tires during a bicycle race on the embankment near the Kremlin: the musician neatly settled down on the dividing strip of Moskvoretskaya embankment. Every day of Moscow life gave him and the entire film crew a whole pile of impressions and emotions, which they now generously share with the audience.

The result is a documentary film and a musical in one bottle, which tells about Moscow through the eyes of musicians and composers. There was a vivid musical portrait of our city, woven from sounds, words and emotions.

The work on the film was carried out as follows: while Dan was taking his first steps in exploring the urban space, Moscow musicians performed their music live especially for the film in non-standard, but spectacular Moscow locations. By the end, the authors of the picture themselves pick up the instruments, arranging sessions of jam improvisations – the magic of music finally wins, and the viewer hears the unique track of Moscow.

Dan, by the way, is known as a member of the duo Fingathing and DJ Peter Parker. And in the director’s piggy bank of Peter Keleptrishvili, this is already the second full-length documentary musical film. In his first job, Peter went to the UK in search of young and talented musicians, future stars of world music. “City of Music” continues this theme.

20 artists and musical groups of various genres and directions took part in the new film of the director. In the film there will be interviews of everyone, and everyone will share only something personal and important. Some tell stories from their childhood that led them to the world of music, others reveal life hacks (the word, by the way, consists of two parts – “life” and “hack”) of composing and writing songs, others are immersed in memories of an unusual audience and parties after performances .

The music in the film has become a kind of separate incorporeal hero, which manifests itself in a variety of formats – ephemeral, barely perceptible or tearing the membranes of the musical energy is constantly pulsing in the frame and beyond. The creators answer questions about how it is born, where to find inspiration, is music needed in the modern world?

“In this film,” says Anton Belyaev, Therr Maitz band, a project participant, “there are opinions of musicians, and it seems to me that this is a good prism to look differently at everyday life in Moscow. You come to a concert and switch off for two hours from your problems to relax, dance and return to your world. This film partly explains the feelings of people who are engaged in this very shutdown. A person who lives differently can imagine himself in this role, understand how a musician lives and why he does it. To create such a movie is a rather selfless act, for me personally it is very valuable.

Elena Bulova.

Photos provided by the film crew of the film “City of Music”