The Sandra Frackenberg Quartet will perform folk songs in a jazz arrangement

MOSCOW, April 25 On May 5, the Sandra Frackenberg Quartet will perform on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg with a new experimental program, Russian Lullaby. The musicians will perform folklore and folk songs in original jazz arrangements. And the concert director prepares surprises for the audience to immerse them in the atmosphere of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

«» Jazz is folk music, and folk music is jazz. They are very similar. Everyone is used to the fact that jazz is the golden era of Hollywood, the late 20s and up to the 40s. But it was important for me to show that it It’s not so academic, it’s free, live music,” said Sandra Frackenberg.
Sandra Frakenberg Quartet is a Moscow jazz group, winner of the Moscow Jazz Festival-2023, took part in the Koktebel jazz party and the Future of Jazz festivals, where they performed together with the orchestra conducted by Igor Butman. Sandra Frackenberg is the band leader of the quartet, a student at the AMU at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, studying to be an opera singer. Artem Tretyakov — piano, Svyatoslav Epifanov — guitar, Kasyan Lekus — double bass, Mikhail Fotchenkov — drums.

In the Russian Lullaby program, viewers will hear both little-known melodies of lullabies, laments and wedding songs, and the familiar “Along St. Petersburg” and “Black Eyes” in original jazz arrangements. While preparing the program, the musicians worked with ethnographers, deciphered ancient village songs, adapting them to the norms of the modern Russian language.
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“Russian music is quite similar in different regions — in melody, in rhythm. And all the messages encrypted in songs are approximately the same everywhere. They have a character not only of everyday life, but also of mystical character. We dug into areas that have not been explored. And some interesting situations always happened at our concerts: suddenly the lights went out, all the sound, the notes were lost,” Sandra noted.

The program was prepared in collaboration with director, so the audience will have an immersive experience — the air will be filled with non-musical, everyday sounds.
“I was lucky enough to work with the incredibly talented director Sofia Nikiforova. She made a folklore performance, she is a musician herself and from a family of folklorists. What exactly we did with her is a secret. But I can say that we will try to reflect in non-standard forms such aspects of Russian culture as violent fun, Russian booze, which we all remember from fairy tales, so that there is honey, and wine, and painful Russian melancholy, and love, and the tender state of spring. We will try to immerse the viewer in the everyday environment of a hundred years ago,” explained the vocalist.

In her opinion, relevance ancient, folk music, first of all, in its honesty. «We now see the world in a very distorted way, we are constantly under the influence of society, social phenomena. We are not able to slow down and look at everything even like people 50 years ago. Folk music returns a person to a more honest and deep state for him. This is strong music, We all have it in our cultural code. I remember how we played the funeral verse “Grief”, then everyone was silent for 15 minutes, some were crying. For me it was an impulse that this program must be continued, a person must. it’s to worry,” said Sandra.