Mel Bay's Creative Keyboard® Webzine | Misha Stefanuk - July: Independence Day

July: Independence Day

When I was asked to be a monthly columnist for Creative Keyboard®, I got very excited. The chance to be heard on a regular basis is rare and extraordinary in contemporary music life. So when it happened, I started to think about all the people I know who did similar things. There was a music critic from The New York Times I met, interviewers from the Russian Music Paper, Nashville Banner, Moscow Pullman News, and my amazing music history teacher Ekaterina Tsareva, who wrote program notes for the Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory.

However, the first person who came to mind was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who in 1876 was commissioned by St. Petersburg magazine, Nouvelliste, to write one piano piece per month. The twelve-piece cycle represents the never-ending reappearance of life. Moscow Conservatory as well as Moscow Conservatory School from which I graduated is named after Tchaikovsky. The two largest Moscow concert halls are the grand hall of Tchaikovsky Conservatory and Tchaikovsky Hall. The Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow is the greatest competition in the world which started the careers of such pianists as Barry Douglas, Mikhail Pletnev and Van Clibern, to name a few.

As far as I know the writing of a twelve-piece monthly piano composition for a publication has not yet been repeated, and the idea of following in Tchaikovsky's footsteps sounds simply too fantastic to resist. So, here is the seventh piece from my cycle The Seasons op.104:

Audio Sample: july.mp3

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