A Pianist Who Played By His Own Rules
Alexei Sultanov’s Diminuendo in Black

By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 11, 2005; Page C01

Pianist Alexei Sultanov and his wife, Dace, playing “America the Beautiful” before their November naturalization ceremony in Fort Worth.( – FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM)

For a few months in 1989, a teenager named Alexei Sultanov was perhaps the most celebrated — and certainly the most discussed — young pianist in the world.

He had come to the United States from the rapidly disintegrating Soviet Union to play in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth. The author Joseph Horowitz, who heard him there, called him “a veritable wild child from Tashkent, in the shadow of the Himalayas.” Sultanov’s playing was fast, urgent, hyper-emotional and breathtakingly loud: He pounded the keyboard so hard in performance of Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz No. 1” that a string groaned and snapped.

And yet, on June 11, 1989, Sultanov was awarded the top prize from America’s wealthiest classical music competition — $15,000 in cash, a recital at Carnegie Hall, a recording contract, and sponsored tours throughout the United States and Europe. Upon hearing of his victory, Sultanov mounted the stage as though he were in a “Rocky” movie, grabbed the trophy and hoisted it over his head, triumphant.

It was the last great moment in his career.

Alexei Sultanov, 35 years old, died on June 30 at his home in Fort Worth. The cause of death has not been determined, but Sultanov’s neurologist, Edward Kramer, said it was likely due to a series of strokes the pianist had suffered, beginning as far back as 1995 and culminating in a massive hemorrhage in 2001 that left him partially paralyzed.

Word of Sultanov’s Cliburn victory was carried in newspapers around the globe; his death has attracted scant notice and virtually nothing outside of Texas. The longest obituary, by Wayne Lee Gay at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, began: “Alexei Sultanov soared to musical heights that other musicians only dream of, and crashed to earth with personal tragedy that few have to bear.”

In fact, the “crash” began even before the Cliburn competition was over, for few medalists have ever been so controversial. “Many in the audience adore him,” Horowitz wrote in his 1990 study of the Cliburn competition, “The Ivory Trade.” “The pianists I talk to react with horror or admiration: There is no middle ground.”

That would never change. Denise Mullins, who was the Cliburn Foundation’s artistic administrator in 1989, put the gentlest spin on it in an interview with the Star-Telegram. “He took things to the absolute edge of the cliff, and it was very exciting to hear,” she said. “He wasn’t afraid to take a chance on stage, and there aren’t a lot of pianists who do that. But that worked for him, and it worked against him.”

Some of the Cliburn judges were less kind. The venerable Hungarian pianist Gyorgy Sandor called Sultanov’s win a “tremendous scandal” and suggested that he should have been granted nothing more than a scholarship for further study. Another judge, the British pianist John Lill, wondered aloud “whether the gold medal will weigh too heavily on a performer as young as Sultanov, still not out of conservatory, still not fully formed artistically and yet to learn a breadth of repertory.”

Nor were many of the reviewers helpful. “Alexei Sultanov seems a nice enough young man, with a full head of black hair, dark eyes in an open face and fingers both graceful and strong,” Peter Goodman wrote in Newsday after the Carnegie Hall debut in 1990. “Is it his fault that at age 20 he has not yet got much idea of what Mozart wrote, or Beethoven? Or that he can handle the pyrotechnical aspects of Scriabin, Prokofiev and Liszt, but with barely an inkling of what deeper meanings their music might have?”

And Alan Rich, writing in the pages of the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, called Sultanov’s first California performance a “generally dreadful concert — easily the worst debut recital I’ve attended since the last Cliburn winner earned his obligatory American engagement.” Still, amidst it all, Rich offered the hope that Sultanov might now “retire from the limelight, find himself a good teacher of art history and aesthetics and come back as a musician — not just a piano player — in four or five years.”

It never happened, of course. Sultanov was now irrevocably caught up in the machinery of the music business, and he didn’t handle it very well. “When you have to play a concert in Warsaw, then hop a plane to London, do three radio interviews in English, then play another concert, it’s an exhaustion you simply can’t foresee,” Mullins said. “There were times when he was difficult. I think he was tired and I think he was frustrated. He loved to enjoy his life. He wanted to see his family. He wanted to see his friends.”

Sultanov fulfilled most of the engagements required of the Cliburn winner and then his bookings trickled off, leaving him a perceived “has-been” in his early twenties. He stayed in Fort Worth and watched other young contestants bask in the moments of Cliburn glory that had once been his. In 1995, he went to Warsaw to play in the Chopin International Piano Competition, where he was a popular favorite and was cited by the Polish critic Piotr Wirzbicki as a great interpreter of the composer’s work. The judges felt otherwise. “The Chopin tradition has certain standards which must be upheld,” pianist and jury chairman Jan Ekier said, in declining to award a first prize.

“Give me a great review or a horrible one,” Sultanov shot back. “If people agree with you too much, that means there’s not much personality. The Polish jurists, on the other hand, wanted waltzes played in a slightly lovesick way for all the grandmothers who probably danced them in Chopin’s own time.”

Later that fall, Sultanov probably suffered his first stroke, but it was of minor consequence and discovered only later. He continued to play until the dreadful day in February 2001 when he walked into his doctor’s office, barely able to speak. Suffering from severe internal bleeding, he slipped into a coma, and when he awakened, a few days later, he had lost use of his left arm and leg.

In his last years, according to Gay, Sultanov “found a new, almost heroic role as a man determined to overcome physical disability. He swam and took up therapeutic horseback riding — and, with his wife playing the cello or the left-hand part beside him, played piano with his right hand at nursing homes, YMCA facilities and group meetings of physically disabled people.” In November 2004, Sultanov was made a U.S. citizen; he played “America the Beautiful” at the ceremony. It was his final public appearance.

“He was always one of a kind, always unique,” his wife, Dace Sultanov, said last week. “He was always at the center of attention, always fiery, brilliant. People loved him or hated him, but more people loved him.”

Whatever one thought of Sultanov’s playing, there are many worse epitaphs than that.

June 28, 2005
Isidore Cohen, 82, Violinist in Premier Chamber Groups, Is Dead
By ALLAN KOZINN

Isidore Cohen, a violinist who, as a member of the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio, was an important chamber music performer and a teacher, died on Thursday in the Bronx. He was 82 and lived in Manhattan.

Mr. Cohen’s death was announced by Frank Salomon, an administrator of the Marlboro Music School and Festival, the summer program in Marlboro, Vt., where Mr. Cohen taught for nearly 40 years.

A genial, energetic musician whose interests ranged from Haydn to Elliott Carter, Mr. Cohen can be heard on dozens of classic recordings by the Beaux Arts Trio, including the complete Haydn and Beethoven Piano Trios and works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Ives and Shostakovich.

As the ensemble’s violinist, he held a pivotal position, physically as well as musically. Early in Mr. Cohen’s tenure with the group, the players decided that for acoustical reasons, the cellist – then Bernard Greenhouse – should face the audience directly. That meant that Mr. Greenhouse could not make eye contact with Menahem Pressler, the group’s pianist. In what became a Beaux Arts visual quirk, Mr. Pressler regularly glanced over his shoulder at Mr. Cohen who, because he had eye contact with both of the other players, became a relay between them.

Mr. Cohen was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 16, 1922. He began studying the violin at 6 and continued his studies at Music and Art High School in Manhattan, from which he graduated in 1940. At the time, however, he had not decided to seek a musical career, and enrolled at Brooklyn College as a pre-med student. His studies were interrupted in 1943, when he joined the United States Army and fought in Europe. During his three years in the service, Mr. Cohen performed in the Army’s symphony orchestra and in jazz bands.

When he returned to the United States, Mr. Cohen became a student of Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School, and began a career as a freelance violinist. Starting in the early 1950’s, he was concertmaster of the resident orchestras at the festivals directed by the cellist and conductor Pablo Casals, in Prades, France, and in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was later the concertmaster of several New York ensembles, including the Little Orchestra Society and, for several of its early seasons, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra.

At the Casals festivals, Mr. Cohen met the violinist Alexander Schneider, who invited him to join the Schneider String Quartet as second violinist, in 1952. Among the Schneider Quartet’s accomplishments was a traversal, both in concert and on recordings, of the complete Haydn quartets. In 1958, Mr. Cohen joined the Juilliard String Quartet, also as second violinist. He performed with the group for a decade.

When the Beaux Arts Trio’s original violinist, Daniel Guilet, retired in 1968, Mr. Pressler and Mr. Greenhouse invited Mr. Cohen to take his place. Mr. Cohen was reluctant at first.

“It seemed to me that the best thing to do would be to work together for a week or so and see how it went,” he said in a 1979 interview. “But they said, ‘no, either you want to join or you don’t.’ I knew their playing, they knew mine, and it was two against one, so I joined.”

By the mid-1970’s, the Beaux Arts had become the world’s most prominent piano trio and was touring and recording plentifully. Mr. Cohen remained a member until his retirement in 1992.

During his years in the Juilliard and Beaux Arts groups, Mr. Cohen also taught, and was at various times a member of the faculties at the Aspen Festival, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the Juilliard School, Princeton University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the Manhattan School of Music. His most long-standing association, though, was with Marlboro, where he began teaching in 1966. He regularly toured as part of Musicians from Marlboro, a flexible ensemble that included both faculty and student performers.

He is survived by a daughter, Erica Cohen of Tepoztlán, Mexico, and a son, Allen Cohen, of New York City, Marlboro and Madrid.

http://mjblige.com/1971년 뉴욕 출생
스타일 : R&B, HipHop, Urban
레이블 : MCA, Uptown/MCA
유사한 뮤지션 : Faith Evans, Usher, Brandy, Adina Howard, Yvette Michele, Shae Jones

[Biography]

Queen of soul(소울의 여왕). 흑인음악계의 여성 보컬리스트에게 붙여지는 수많은 수식어들 중에서도 가장 영예로운 명칭이 아닐까 싶다. 그렇다면 90 년대의 여러 디바들 중 과연 누구에게 이 명칭이 가장 잘 어울릴까?

아마도 흑인음악에 조금이라도 관심을 가지고 있는 사람이라면 열의 아홉쯤은 메리 제이 블라이즈(Mary J Blige)의 손을 들어줄 것이다. 본명이 Mary Jane Blige인 그녀는, 어린 시절부터 Gladys knight (글래디스 나잇)이나 Al Green (알 그린) 등을 들으며 풍부한 감성을 키워왔으며, 그 덕에 말끔한 고음역이나 현란한 기교를 가졌다기보다는 영혼으로 노래하는 싱어라는 평가를 받게 된다.

이러한 그녀만의 재능은 ’92년 발표된 데뷔 앨범 ‘What’s the 411?’ 에서 비로소 세인들에게 알려지기 시작하는데, 데뷔 앨범이라기엔 이례적으로 300만장 이상의 판매고를 올리며 “You remind me”, “Love no limit” 등 많은 싱글도 성공을 거두었다.

또한 메리 제이의 두 번째 앨범인 ‘My Life'(’94) 도 소포모어 징크스가 무색할만한 결과를 얻게 되는데, “My life”, “You bring me joy” 등의 싱글이 연타를 치며 그 해 그래미 시상식 (Grammy award) ‘Best R&B album’ 후보에도 지명되는 영광을 누린다.

이때부터 본격적으로 ‘Queen of the Hip Hop & Soul’ 이라는 그녀의 별칭이 익숙해지기 시작했고, 메리 제이의 1, 2집의 대부분 작업을 도맡아 했던 Sean “Puffy” Combs의 주가 또한 오르기 시작했다. 그 이후 3집까지 메리 제이에게는 3년의 공백기간이 생기는데, 이 기간 동안에도 쉬지 않은 그녀의 히트 행진은 계속되었다.

90년대를 대표하는 여성싱어들이 총망라되었다고 할 수 있는 OST 에서도 메리 제이의 힘있는 보컬은 특히나 인상적이었는데, 앨범 수록곡인 “Not gon’ cry”는 플래티넘을 기록하며 싱글차트 2위까지 오르는 기염을 토한다.

2집 이후 3년만인 ’97년 발표된 3집 ‘Share My World’는 이전 그 어느 앨범보다 화려한 진영을 자랑하며 당당히 앨범차트 1위에 오른다. R.kelly,Babyface, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Rodney Jerkins 등, 내로라하는 아티스트들이 즐비한 이 앨범은 ‘소문난 잔치엔 먹을 것도 많다’ 는 새로운 교훈을 심어주며 “Everything” 등의 싱글 히트곡을 낳았다.

세 번째 앨범의 성공으로 무척 고무된 메리 제이는 흑인 음악 뮤지션으로는 흔치 않은 라이브 앨범 를 이듬해인 ’98년에 발표하고, ‘Diva’s live’에도 참여하는 등 활발한 활동을 펼친다. 셀프 타이틀 앨범 ‘Mary'(’99) 는 자신의 이름을 타이틀에 건만큼, Elton John, Aretha Franklin, Babyface, Eric clapton, K-Ci hailey, Lauryn Hill, George michael 등 장르를 초월한 여러 뮤지션들과의 신선한 교류중에도 자신의 색깔을 잃지 않은 음악을 들려줘 다시 한 번 90년대 최고의 soul queen으로서의 면모를 과시했다.

[Discography]

1992 < What’s the 411? > Uptown/MCA
1994 < My Life > Uptown/MCA
1995 < Mary Jane > MCA
1997 < Share My World > MCA
1998 < The Tour> MCA
1999 < Mary > MCA