Perch biography

Russia Mikhail Okun is a famous jazz pianist, arranger, composer. For more than a summer professional career, Mikhail Moiseevich played in the legendary pop orchestra Leonid Utesov and Kadance Hermanna Lukyanov, 22 years old was the soloist of the orchestra Oleg Lundstrem, acted as a leader of his own small compositions. He teaches the piano at the jazz school on the horde. We asked his son, pianist Jacob Okun, to tell about the creative biography of Mikhail Moiseevich.

Teaching, music projects, author's work? He composes, invents arrangements for his trio, teaches. He began to teach about forty years, he taught quite a lot, but in different years with different interests: somehow it turns out in exciting, sometimes gifted students come, and then there are no one for several years ... In my opinion, he managed to prepare a lot of excellent musicians.

The first was Lev Kushnir. I can name a couple of existing pianists, who have become quite famous over the past five years - this is Oleg Starikov and Oleg Udacov. In the game of these two young musicians, you can hear that they were engaged in interest with their father. As for a more adult generation, my dad consulted many of my colleagues and peers.

The father has a strict teacher, but he is a person with a sense of humor, and not without irony can help find and fix weaknesses. To academic music? He and his mother adore academic music and know it well, unlike me. It's like a listener, but as a performer ... I can only remember that he sits playing Chopin, preparing to pass the exam in muses. Marx, where my grandmother took him.

He studied the game on the piano at Larisa Vasilievna Mohel, who stood at the origins of the piano department of this school, the wife of an outstanding organist L. and the director of the school and a solfeggio teacher was Bartholomew Aleksandrovich Vakhromeev, the author of the elementary theory of music. In general, it was such a completely academic circle of strict people and teachers.

And so he did, made successes, and then, suddenly, he was tired of everything and he, at the end of musical and secondary schools, entered ... to the Moscow Textile Institute. I only know that in his youth he played on a goverky accordion. Only on the classical accordion, but on the keyboard, in my opinion, this tool is called a melody. And then he already wrote arrangements. And played a little more on the guitar.

In parallel with this, he listened to jazz notes and was soon completely carried away by classes. I must say that dad’s family is generally very musical. My grandfather, Moses Mikhailovich Okun, was a very gifted man by nature. The cousin of my grandfather, for example, is the famous Soviet pianist Jacob Flier. My great-grandfather took her grandfather to learn music, but for some reason he interrupted the musical education, and nevertheless, until the end of his life he played perfectly on the piano, even improvised in the spirit of impressionists and scrubs.

It turned out that his grandfather in his youth bought notes in the store, learned this melody and played in the companies of friends on dancing. I must say that I at one time did almost the same thing - I did not immediately understand that I want to be a professional musician. Yes, and all this was always decided by itself, completely independently, without external pressure.

And in my and in my father's life. It is interesting that my nephew, Borya, the son of my older brother, is also gifted musically, he graduated from a music school, but became a military translator. He sometimes sits in the grandfather’s piano and plays with pleasure for an hour or two ... I’m about the fact that music is not in the first place in our family, but in a red thread. If a passion arises, we are engaged, no - we just love.

Only by acquaintance? In general, it usually happened the same as in my youth: we recognized each other not only because we studied together, but there were also some kind of parties, jams. They started to be friends, play together ... They met with senior musicians - they came to their rehearsals, asked to get hooked. What was their creative cooperation? I really love this record. I think that this is a great, rare success, when both performance and music - everything worked out.

Therefore, it seems to me that this was not just cooperation, but rather, the fruit of gentle friendly relations. They selected the material with Lyudmila Markovna, but I must say that dad never arranged anything, that he did not like. I think that Lyudmila Markovna appreciated him as a sincere, direct person and musician. They often called back, sometimes went to visit each other, and I used to be always warm, family, funny at these meetings.