Sergey Kuryokhin - The Ways Of Freedom
(hear “The Wall Kuryokhin”)
Oh man. Have you ever heard of Sergey Kuryokhin? I stumbled at random on his entry in the Penguin book of jazz on CD. He is seriously out of control. Since he is a person, he plays the piano. If he were a mallard, he would play chess.
In 1981, Keith Jarrett was playing concert halls around the world, and I imagine 10 grand pianos lined up on stage, from which he would choose one and demand the others be sent to the wood-chipper. Meanwhile, it sounds like for Kuryokhin’s recording session they wheeled the piano in from the bar next door, except this piano has no wheels.
Perhaps some of the sound comes from the sped-up tape. At least, I hope so - if the tape isn’t being sped up then Kuryokhin has unplumbable depths. The extra tackiness might come from putting something on the strings or playing them directly, although how he could do it that fast is beyond me.
And Kuryokhin wasn’t even just a piano player. For example there’s this famous (in Russia, I gather) video, in which Kuryokhin makes certain surrealistically subversive remarks about Lenin:
