Season 6 Eps.11: "Fearless Vision" Asiya Korepanova - Pianist, Composer, Visual Artist, & Poet

Welcome to another episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song.

This season, we are exploring creativity and connection, highlighting artists who are reshaping what it means to create, perform, and imagine the future of classical music. We are so fortunate to have Assia Korobunova, an exceptional pianist, composer, visual artist, and poet whose work defies boundaries, and expands what classical music can be. Born in Russia into a deeply musical family, Assia began performing and composing at a young age and has since built a career defined by fearless long-form projects, interdisciplinary creation, and bold curatorial vision. As a pianist, she is known for undertaking monumental cycles, including the complete solo piano works of Rachmaninoff during the composer's 150th anniversary year, Liszt's all 24 etudes, and Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Her artistry extends beyond performance into transcription, composition, poetry, and visual art, often woven together in immersive multimedia projects. In addition to her work on stage and online, Asiya is deeply committed to education and access. Through her nonprofit organization, Music for Minds, and her leadership of Festival Flatiron with Yukimi Song, she brings classical music into schools and communities while championing meaningful inclusive programming. Before we dive in, thank you to our listeners, viewers for tuning in today and supporting The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Your engagement, whether through listening, watching, sharing episodes, or leaving a review, helps sustain this growing community of artists and thinkers who are reimagining what classical music can be today. Here is The Piano Pod with pianist, composer, visual artist, and poet Asiya Korobunova. Please enjoy the show.

You are listening to The Piano Pod, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they are bringing the piano into the future and thriving in a complex, ever-evolving world. Asya, thank you so much for being here today. Where are you actually joining from?

Thank you so much, Yukimi. I'm in my home in Boston area. Oh, okay.

It must be really cold. New York is freezing.

It became cold in the recent couple of days. We just got our first snow. It looks like Christmas already. It's very Beautiful.

So I want to say at the first that you're truly an exceptional pianist and artist, and the depth, scale, oh my gosh, and then the fearlessness of your work are really rare. And it is a real privilege to have you at The Piano Pod with our former guest Eleanor Beinmann. Oh, I love Eleanor. Yes, she's an incredible person, and she was our guest last season and spoke so highly about you and encouraged me to reach out. And so thank you for accepting my invitation.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, and I also watched your conversation with her. I think it was on a YouTube channel or something, and then it made me even more excited for today. So I have been spending some time with your solo performances on YouTube and transcriptions— oh my gosh— on YouTube. The breadth of repertoire and level of production are remarkable. And of course, your work extends far beyond the piano into poetry, visual art, and composition. So all that leads beautifully into my first question, which is, what would you say is the core mission or driving passion behind you, the all the work you do right now?

I would say that I never thought of a mission as a label, or like, what is the message of what I'm trying to do? I would say I would follow my vision. I always had ideas early on about musical ideas, about visual ideas, about language, about image in a broad sense of it. It also helped that I was one of the earliest projects in the realm of homeschooling. My mom homeschooled me until I was about 10. So my first grade class that I went was the 4th grade, and there were some underlying family circumstances. We were traveling quite a bit between different cities in, uh, in Russia, and so I was just learning as I was going. And I was also a very hyperactive child, so my, my poor mom was always with a suitcase of, you know, paper and pencils and books and things and everything in between. And so, as I was getting distracted and would become a little bit too active, she would know how to distract me with a new activity. So I started drawing very, very early. I was given access to a typewriter when I was about 3.5 to 4 years old, and there are some evidence of how my gibberish gradually started to form in some thoughtful expression. I remember that period of my life with a lot of sweetness because it was a little bit nomadic but very artistic at the same time. I think I carried that sense into my adulthood because You know, today as a performing artist, we are on the road all the time. And of course, I have some colleagues and friends and family who share their experiences or wondering, like, how can you be on the road? It's so daunting. I'm thriving on the road. I love to be on the road. And it's so strange. I can sleep in any position, in any moving object. I'm just, I think I was prepared for that from early on. But also, I also learned to go for whatever comes to mind right away. I have an idea of transcription in the mornings. Sometimes I already would have a few pages of that down in the evening because I just like, oh, I have to do this right now. Or I have something like a poem, just, I have a poem idea and then I start working on it, or I have a composition idea. And so this urge and immediacy to fulfill that urge, I think, is still very childlike in me, but it works for me quite well.

Oh yeah. Well, oh yes, meaning I'm not saying you're childish or anything, but you know, all the work you do, it's just coming from you just now, it really makes sense. And, but I didn't realize your family was traveling a lot.

Well, my parents, right before I was born, were postgraduate students in Moscow. They were studying in Moscow Conservatory and then Gnesin Academy. That's another big school in Moscow. And, but my mother was born in a city of Kazan, which is south of Moscow. Quite, quite far. And my father was born in the city of Irzhask, which is another maybe 100 miles more south and east from there. And they met as students in Kazan Conservatory. Kazan Conservatory is also a big school, a wonderful musical institution. And when I was born, my parents at first continued their studies, and then there were some illnesses in the family. We were traveling to Kazan, traveling to Ozhets, traveling to Moscow, traveling. And it was, it was just like this 8th that was between these 3 points of these cities. So by the time I was about 3 or 4 years old, my parents were joking that I spent about half of my then lifetime on the train. So, uh, it was just different circumstances, but also My mother, after she graduated, she— there was a period of time when she was teaching at the Gnessin Academy, and I was sitting at her lessons and drawing and observing her teaching students or performing or practicing. And the family legend says that I was about 3 years old when I started pushing her from the piano as she was practicing and saying, "That is my time to practice." So even though neither of my parents were actively encouraging me to become a musician, because especially around the break of Soviet Union, it was very difficult times and becoming professional musicians probably was not the wisest thing ever. Everybody says that. That's a universal. Yeah.

Wow. Then, so your mom is a pianist and your father is—

my father is a composer.

Oh wow, okay. Yeah, wonderful. Now I'm gonna go back to your childhood and training a little bit later on, but that's a really wonderful way to start and I understand. So then I want to talk about this— we're going to jump to this extreme long-form projects. Wow, your career is filled with what many would consider impossible undertakings: the complete Rachmaninoff solo piano pieces, Liszt 24 Etudes, all of them, and Bach Complete Well-Tempered Clavier. So you've performed the complete Rachmaninoff solo works during the composer's 150th anniversary year. That was like 2 years ago.

It was in 2023.

Right, right. So let's start here. Can you tell us more about taking on his complete solo piano works during the anniversary year?

It may sound a little maybe strange, but I decided to do that last minute. With Rachmaninoff's project, it was maybe an act of resistance on my side because it was— I remember it vividly, it was July of 2022. And I was watching concert organizations in the United States and Russia worldwide announcing their upcoming seasons. And since Beethoven's 250th anniversary was just a few years back, and we were seeing Beethoven on every corner, despite the COVID and pandemic, people were doing so many projects. So many pianists played complete 32 Beethovens, and I a lot of symphonies were doing, complete symphonies, and you know, there were so, so much work, chamber music and everything. So I was kind of expecting some similar scale to happen for Rachmaninoff, and then they realized there's not. I was saying, well, Yu-Jeong Wang will announce that she's going to perform 5 Rachmaninoff concertos in the same night. A few people, uh, such as Nikolai Lugansky and I think Mikhail Plitnov as well, did that in Europe. And there were different colleagues that did recitals dedicated to Rachmaninoff music, but there was not a single person who thought to put out a set or even series of complete works. There was later on, last year actually, 2024, there was a festival in Colombia that did dedicate their entire festival to music of Rachmaninoff, and they invited, I think, 10 or 12 pianists to play those works over the course of several days, but that was also a little much later than the anniversary itself. And I understand that the tragic circumstances in Eastern Europe might have, you know, influenced the decisions of, you know, playing Rachmaninoff's music more broadly, or, you know, we never know what's in people's heads. But I felt offended. I felt that this is such an injustice because Rachmaninoff is one of the most beloved composers on Earth. If you want to sell out the house, you put Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto in, or his Second Symphony, or his Symphonic Dances. You know that it is something that is immensely attractive to people, and it just really, really touches people's hearts across generations, across cultures, across everything. And I know that I, I can learn fast, and I know that I can concentrate on things quite deeply. And so I thought, well, I guess I need to do something about it. In July of 2022, in my repertoire, I had Rachmaninoff First and Second Sonata, one etude-tableau, five morceaux Op. 3, and a transcription of Daisies. That's it. That meant everything else I had to learn from scratch for the following year.

Wow.

That's what I did. That's what I did. I divided— I constructed 6 programs out of this body of works, and I was playing one program every 2 months. January, March, May, July, September. I ended up getting violently sick in May and had to postpone the series by one month a little bit, because there was one place in Miami, the revered Friends of Chamber Music of Miami. They decided to carry all the six programs in the same place. That was my home series for these concerts, while each individual concert I also played in other places, but all 6 I played there. And so they were incredibly sweet and they were incredibly encouraging and excited because they felt that this is a very special occasion and very special moment. And they definitely never had same pianist play 6 recitals in the same calendar year, but that was an immense honor and trust that they had. And I'm eternally grateful for them for doing that for me. And it also meant that I knew that I have an audience that is eager to hear the next installment and the next installment. I would definitely say, you know, like when we see sometimes advertisements on television and there's a disclaimer, don't do this at home. I would say don't embark on something like this on 6 months notice, because the problem was not just I had to learn all this music, I also was premiering my transcription of Manfred Symphony in February. I was playing the same month, I was debuting my 24 Liszt Etudes program in Merkin Hall in New York City. I was traveling, I played 4 piano concertos in different places at the same time. I also learned another Liszt almost a recital worth of program at the request of American Liszt Society, such as Gross's concert solo, that is a very rarely performed work, so-called sonata, the minor Sonata 101. It's something that he wrote right before arriving. So I had a lot of repertoire in my head, and it definitely was mentally the most unbelievably exhausting year, but it also tested my resilience and my faith in completing what I decided to do. And it brought 8 hours of music into my repertoire. Well, I had some of that, the two sonatas and little pieces, but like at least 6 and a little bit of that I learned then, and I continue playing this music and it brings me so much joy. When I was a student back in Russia, in my grade school, grade school, in my middle school and high school, I was double major, doubling as a composer as well. And I was studying with an incredible person who also was a professor of my father. Albert Lehmann, who was a student of Shostakovich.

Oh my goodness.

And I started studying with him when I was 9, uh, even before I actually went to school. And he was very encouraging. He was a fantastic pianist himself, but in Russia, in Central Music School where I went, uh, people start tackling very difficult repertoire very early. It's very competitive. And everyone is trying to start playing Rachmaninoff as early as possible, and he discouraged me from doing that. He's like, you have to understand, Rachmaninoff is a little bit like Brahms. We tend to play Brahms better as we mature, and the longer you wait before you play Rachmaninoff, the better for you. I don't know what sat with me so deeply in his words, because I sort of violated the Brahms part heavily. I was playing his concertos already in my teen years, and some other works, but I held off from Rachmaninoff for a really long time. My very first Rachmaninoff piece that I've ever played was Rappein of Cello Sonata. And I was only 19 years old when I, when I learned it and fell in love with the piece and eventually wrote a solo piano transcription of it that now I'm playing as a solo sonata. But then shortly after that, I added Second Concerto and then Paganini Rhapsody and then First Concerto and then later on Third Concerto. And I even was going to perform the Fourth Concerto, learned it, but there was a circumstance that the concert got canceled. So the Fourth Concerto is the one that is still waiting to be performed, but I was playing the concertos, but not the solo repertoire. And then I came to United States and became a pupil of Santiago Rodríguez, a fantastic Cuban-American pianist who is a god in Rachmaninoff. His recordings of Rachmaninoff are just unbelievable. I started listening to some of his CDs and got completely obsessed with the First Sonata and learned it in started playing it and later on decided to learn the second one when I discovered the original version of it. Because in Russia almost exclusively people play the second version, which I never really loved. It felt kind of like— I know tomatoes are going to fly into my head as I say it— it felt a little bit poppory-ish. It's like, it felt like almost like pop music comparing to some of Rachmaninoff's works. And then when I discovered the original version, I realized why, because all the gloomy and philosophical moments he decided to take out and make more condensed. He cut out 6 minutes of music, made a much more condensed more flashy version. And so I was like, "Oh!" And learned the original version, and now I'm playing happily the original version. But it was a long process into Rachmaninoff. I loved his orchestral music my entire life. I listened to his symphonies obsessively for so many years. But I really got to play and learn the Preludes and Études Tableau and Maman Musicaux and all these other things and discovered all of the baby pieces he wrote when he was 14, 15, 16 that I almost never played, thanks to this project. So rounding up for that, it's been a great pleasure and fulfillment in my life to do that. And It might seem extreme, but extremity of it was never the point. It's not because I wanted to, you know, let's do something unusual. I just wanted to do this because it is due diligence of a pianist to say thank you for Rachmaninoff, for his crazy life and incredible music that he brought to our lives. Absolutely. Yeah. And following a little bit more your question about the extreme projects in general, if we look to times before recordings became a norm, If we look at times of Busoni, Joseph Hoffman, and people like that, having a big repertoire was not something unusual. I would say that also in Russia, teachers who are more rigorous, they tend to assign complete cycles to students early on. It's not unusual to say you're going to learn all of the inventions, and then you're going to learn all the symphonies. When I was assigned Prelude and Fugue in school, I was not assigned one, I was assigned 4 or 5 at a time. And Mikhail Plitnov was graduating Moscow Conservatory offering any of the Preludes and Fugues of Well-Tempered Clavier at the discretion of the jury panel. People just don't talk about these things. Joseph Hoffman in the beginning of 20th century famously played the season in Saint Petersburg of 13 recitals about every 3 weeks. He was playing a recital where not a single piece was repeated. And he practically played all the standard repertoire, Chopin sonatas, or how about Beethoven sonatas, Mozart, you know, romantic pieces, transcriptions, like everything under the sun. Uh, it was partially why, when we listen to these old masters, I think that they sound as if the wisdom is coming through their fingers, because they're going through so much material, absorbing so much of the language of the composer. Because let's say I didn't play a lot of Rachmaninoff in my life. For me, the most difficult part was to quickly figure out the very fine particulars about his language, because he's not He can be somewhat similar to Scriabin. They were living together at some point and composing side by side, and Scriabin is as dense sometimes, uh, in terms of his texture, but it's not the same. He's not Medtner either. He's not, you know, it's, it's a very, very particular idiom, and the more of the same composer you play through the more ideas you have. Oh, this is exactly that motive that he used in that work, in that work, in symphony, concerto, quartet, whatever. I mean, in terms of Rachmaninoff quartet would be a little bit of approximation, but you know, you know what I mean. So I think when recordings became a thing, the people's repertoires in general narrowed. On average. I— on average, I'm saying, because of course we have Marc-André Hamlet, we have Stephen Hawking, we have all these people who do massive projects as well. But we look at Martha Argerich, he's one of the most phenomenal pianists on Earth. But if you count how many concertos has she played in her life and how many solo works she played, uh, it's not going to be a lot. Right. Absolutely. She, what she plays, she plays better than anyone in the world, but she found her repertoire that speaks to her and she can play that, let's say, in her sleep. And it is something that is always with her. And I think that works for her, but it also for somebody like me who is a greedy individual and a curious individual. I think I'm thriving when I'm exploring, and so because of that I don't find that it's a good idea to sit on the same thing exclusively without adding something else. And that doesn't mean that I do not play same things many, many, many times, and I enjoy when I have an opportunity to play same program 10 times. That's a joy because you grow immensely through that process. But an ability to add unusual works and rarely played works to your repertoire, I think, just makes you a better musician, a better pianist, challenges you and makes you wonder how composers were able to find new and new and new new ideas out of the same stem of the same language.

You also do a composition, and maybe we can talk about that. Let's start with transcriptions, because I've been listening to your transcriptions. All week long, and then this morning I listened to it twice, actually. It was on loop. I really enjoy listening, and the way you preserve the essence of the original music while reimagining is just remarkable. And you also once described the process of transcription as something like taming a wild animal.

Very much so.

And discovering whether the music will allow itself to be fully realized at the keyboard. Can you talk about what draws you to transcription as a creative act?

It is a complete selfish act. It's like, I want this candy. You go through, you go through a shiny mall and you see a store of I don't know, Benshi Italian chocolate. Like, I want all of that to myself. So it always comes from an obsession with something that you like so much, you just want to play it yourself. One of the first ideas for transcription was Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata, but I did not even attempt that because I felt too much respect for Rachmaninoff. And it was actually my professor Santiago Rodriguez with whom I spoke about this. I said, I have this idea, and he's like, what are you waiting for? Go for it, go for it. I'm like, really? He's like, yeah. So I went and home that night I started sketching things, but the very first transcription that I wrote was of Gabriel Fauré's Elegy.

Oh, the transcription is amazing. I played emotional.

Thank you. I played that for a while with cellists and I'm like, I just want to play it myself. Okay. I have to be honest. My cellist friends approve largely. And they said, "Oh, this actually works! We didn't think it would!" But different people told me that they enjoyed hearing that, and that meant so much, because even having, let's say, debates about clarinetists saying, "Oh, Brahms sonatas do not sound very well on violas!" And violists go like, "We're much better in Brahms sonatas than clarinetists." So there is always this jealousy about repertoire, but transcriptions have different kinds. There are literal transcriptions. There are transcriptions that— one example of a literal transcription would be let's say, Liszt's Beethoven symphonies. Like, you do invent some textures, but that's just only to convey what's there in the music. There are works like Tannhäuser Overture by Liszt also that is fairly, fairly close to the original. He tweaked certain things, but it's, it's a very faithful. Then there are ornamental transcriptions, let's say, um, Rigoletto Fantasy, that follows the quartet in time, how it progresses, but adds lots of flourishing and things like that. And there's also a complete paraphrasing when things blend with each other, and the concert fantasies are like that. And things like that. I find myself most comfortable in real— between literal transcription and a bit of embellishment. Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata, I have not added a single note that is not Rachmaninoff's, other than changing the registers and to accommodate certain things. Configurations, let's say, na na na na, I would go na na na na sometimes with the same harmony. Right? So it all, uh, with exact respect to what Rachmaninoff was doing. Cello line is sometimes put 1 or 2 octaves higher, or sometimes is doubled in octaves, but it is all very, very clear. Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony and Strauss' Einhilde and Lämmern already have so much notes in them that your job is to find what you can sacrifice, not what can you add, but what you can sacrifice while still portraying the thickness of the orchestral material, and sometimes you have to invent techniques and things to portray certain things. There is a phenomenal climax in Ein Heldenleben's Hero's Love section, which is number 3, and there is like— and there's two harps are playing glissandos down And they're doing them in octaves together. So they're very prominent. There's so many things going on at the same time, but these cascades of glissandos are very, very, very loud. And like, what do you do? They are glissandos on harmonically black keys. Good luck doing glissando on fortissimo on black keys. You're gonna lose some of your knuckles and some of your skin and like maybe some of your bones.

In there.

So I was just experimenting and just, it took me maybe a good week. It's one of those moments that are giving me a reason to talk about taming a wild animal. The animal goes like, "No, I'm not gonna give you myself." So I invented a fist glissando where you go there and do the, the the glissando by this part of your clenched fist. It is around—

Yeah.

Uh, it's not even pinky. It's meat.

Ah, meat. Okay.

Meat of your— because when you clench it, if you do just do this, it's flat. But if you do this, the muscle rounds up and becomes, uh, thick and rounded, and you can glide through that and you don't break Skin at all. And you can be very, very loud at the same time. It really works. Wow. So once I figured that out, I was like, yes. Yeah. And so, and the third, third type of the, uh, second type of the, um, embellished transcription, I have done a bit. Uh, my Franck Salamariage, This Roses is one of them. The original song is very transparent, mostly with block chords, and it's not much going on. And I kind of reimagined a thicker texture in the style of Frank and made it in a more prominent piece than it was originally. But yeah, I have yet to go into a mode of complete paraphrasing. I have not done quite that so far, but maybe in the future.

And I also love the Bach Christmas Oratorio, you know, transcription arrangement. And then also you've done West Side Story, Maria, from— that's beautiful too.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, another opening choir of Christmas Oratorio is coming out this Christmas, and the score and the video of it will be available. On Christmas Day.

Great. And then, so most of your arrangements and transcriptions are available as a score, a score, right?

About half. I'm working on that.

It takes a long time. But, uh, where can we go and purchase your transcription?

On my website, there is a tab shop that leads to my Etsy store where I I sell all of my scores and also some other merchandise, such as prints of some artwork. And I also have a hobby, piano stickers that I'm making, work very well for encouraging younger students. Yeah.

So that's ArciaKurepanova.com?

.com, or you can also access the same site with just Asea.us.

Oh, Asea.us. Oh, perfect. Wonderful. I will make sure to list those links in the show notes. Let's talk about your original works. I've listened to your alto saxophone and piano composition Poem. Oh, well, I've known this piece for a while because I interviewed both Thomas Giles and Eliana Herron. For The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song. Yes, both together.

Fantastic.

Now I'm connecting the dots. Yes. So that piece was amazing. It's a little jazzy in the middle, like where there, you know, gets a bit dense. Yeah, it's cool. And also Piano Quintet, Marvel at the Sky, and then a combrio for two pianos. So you are composing your own original pieces.

Yeah.

So how does that place you in a different creative space from performing? Like, you know, all of your life as a solo artist, solo pianist, and trained— well, also you studied composition, but does the composition give you a different perspective about yourself, identity, maybe?

Absolutely. When you compose and you make choices about what to put on paper. It makes you look at everything else that was put on paper before you differently. It also makes you note structural elements, and that aids in comprehension of the structure and in memorization and in forming your interpretation. My composition teacher tasked me to write 3 or 4 voice fugues when I was 9 or 10 years old, and sonatinas, and then eventually sonata forms when I was about 10, 11.

So it—

you do it as an exercise, but also you're not trying to do that in Bach style, whatever. You're trying to use an existing form and adapt your own language to it. But it also— in order to be able to do that, you have to study what it means to use that form. What exactly is the form of the fugue? What is its subject and counter subject? What is the episode? What is the stretto? What is the inversion? What kinds of inversions there are? What kinds of retrograde— retrograded inversion? And all these things. And you use These tools are: what is it to have the counter subject that remains the same throughout the fugue, or that does not; what it takes to write a fugue with more than one subject. And eventually I have written a fugue with three subjects for clarinet and piano. Which is a final movement of my triptych for clarinet and piano. But it, it is highly analytical work and highly emotional work at the same time, because you have to analyze consciously what you're doing, but you also have to make sure it, it, it carries an emotion and a feeling that you want to portray, because You know, if we just put something together completely brainy, it's not gonna sound very well. The reason why Berg's late first, like, the Violin Concerto is so beautiful— it's a serial technique, but you, you never think about that it is serial because it's so overwhelmingly beautiful. It carries deep emotion while having the structure that they were experimenting with at the time. So I always encourage my students to try their best to compose something. If they're working on polyphonic music, try your best to at least write a canon and see how far you can go. Try to deeply understand how the structure is made. Try to write a sonatina. And come up with first theme and the episode and the second theme and then closing theme and some kind of development, at least to, to feel what it takes to develop the material that you have. What is it, a development of thematic material? How all these motives that composer takes from his existing themes, he inverts and creates something new and creates new elements, right cadences to your Baroque— sorry, your Classical concertos. Even if you end up not playing them, if you're playing Beethoven concertos or Mozart concertos, I think it's a must to try and write your own and see how can you develop the material that you know so well already in your own way.

So then, you know, these days as a pianist, we talked about how this recording, the innovation of a recording, just deprived of pianists of opportunities to learn expansive work, like for example, you know, the entire thing of Rachmaninoff, for example, you mentioned, and so on. So then when you mentioned about composition and, I feel like the performing artists, like when you study in college, of course we learn, you know, basic theory, even advanced, and also what is it, you know, counterpoint and so on. But you actually have this extensive training of composition and learning about counterpoints. Is that because your parents were musicians that you knew exactly what to learn, or Or is it a very common thing in— back in Russia?

Back in Russia, there are music schools for kids, 1st to 7th grade. It's kind of evening school that is, uh, throughout the country, something that you can subscribe to. But there's also so-called specialized music schools that combine music musical and regular subjects from the first grade through 11th. So it's a whole run, it's the same school from elementary through middle to high. This is one of the schools that I went to. But in Russia, if you go to a musical school, you get an instrument, choir, and theory right away. The course of music theory starts in the first grade and finishes at the fourth grade. At 10 years old, anyone who was born in Russia passes the whole course of music theory. So for us, it is— because of that, it is introduced like a, like a language, so to speak. So because of that, for me, music theory is elementary, and it's called elementary music theory. For me, it is elementary because it was introduced so long time ago. It became second nature. I didn't think about it. When I came to United States and I realized that people who already play advanced pieces on their instruments start learning music theory in college, and they do not know what, I don't know, 7th chord is, or do not know what the Neapolitan 6th is, and things like that. It, it felt a little bit counterintuitive. That said, way before conservatories, uh, when composers that we know now as great composers— Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, Borodin in Russia— but, you know, Bach, and Bach studied with his brother, right? And Beethoven, uh, was beaten up by his father, but he also started taking lessons with his teacher, Nathalie, when he was, I don't know, 9, 10, 11. At that time, I don't think anything was given to anyone in simplified way. So information was given at once, so you already had a bar to which you where to aspire. When I went to study with Professor Lehmann, who studied with Shostakovich, and Shostakovich would not necessarily be very easy on him either, he instantly presented me like, "I don't care how old you are, this is what you're supposed to know how to do." He would just give me tasks that he felt I was able to accomplish, but he also was not necessarily giving me much discount on any of that. Things are gradually changing. A lot of people like to complain that I would never need math in my life, why would I have to study? I will never need physics in my life, why would I need this? Why would I, you know, I will never need harmony, four-part harmony in my life, why would I need to study that? Well, it is done so that this gray matter in, in your head knows how to move around, primarily because when you have to analyze harmony for a four-part harmony test, you analyze tensions in the harmony. You realize internally how one chord resolves to another. How strong the pull between these harmonies are, and it aids immensely in how you then construct a phrase in your interpretation. People don't think directly in these matters, unfortunately, but it is true. In our school, the ear training class goes from the 1st grade through the 11th grade, every year, 2 times a week you come, you listen to dictations, you answer chord progressions, you sing, you sing by yourself, you sing with a partner, you sing as a group. And it also, when you sing, you also learn how to build the phrase in your, in your singing. You, you know how to create a sense of progress in your playing, which is incredibly important. So I would say there is a system in Russia that sometimes can be a bit too traditional, because at times when you want to venture, especially in terms of interpretation, to your own ideas, those ideas may not be very much appreciated, because the belief is in order to invent something new, you need to to really know all of the fundamentals. When we are 18 years old and we are passing examinations to Moscow Conservatory or Saint Petersburg Conservatory or any other conservatory in the country, you play your program that you prepare, 45 minutes of music, then you have an interview at which you are asked random questions from the course, entire course of music history that you did in school. They can ask you virtually anything: how many symphonies this man wrote, what was the— this Beethoven sonata, who was the, the dedicatee of this Beethoven sonata, when was this written, when— can you play us an opening of this piece or that place of this piece, and they also make you to sit down and sight-read something that you do not know. Then you have oral ear training exam where you are played a chord progression of 24 to 32 chords. They play twice, and then you have in those two times, you have to memorize that and tell from memory what chords that they were and in what what was in the soprano line. It is not a random thing. You train for that 11 years. For that, this is something that we do all the time. So it's a part of our training. You have to sing something, sight sing something. The next day there is a written ear training exam. You write, you write a dictation, typically 16 measures played 8 times. The next day there's an oral harmony exam, and you are given a beginning for a period. You have to improvise a period with no wrong voice leadings, and you also have to answer some specific questions on the course of harmony. The next day is the written harmony exam. You're given a 16-measure melody piece of paper, pencil, and eraser, and 4 hours without instrument in a class. And you realize this. So that means you have to hear in your head what you see in order to really realize that. So it really— The Course of Harmony trains you to have this ability to really, really internalize the sound. Then the last exam in that is essay. They give you random 3 topics from the course of the history of literature, typically Russian literature, and you write an essay about, you know, history of this character in this novel or broad ideas of Dostoevsky, let's say, or that and this and that and nobody knows what these topics are going to be, so you presume that you're well-read and you have read all of these novels, so from memory you can reconstruct an idea, stuff like that. So 7 exams. The, the education is free, but it is highly competitive because if you get lower grades in any of these exams after your instrument, it gives you— it brings you lower and lower and lower in the list. And then if you do not make a cut, you don't make a cut. So it's a very different system. It also kind of puts you in a lot of stress because you grow up— everyone who's studying together with you is your direct competitor because you always You have to excel to make the cut, to make the cut, because they also need the special music school. If your grades are not good, they eliminate you and you no longer can study. So it's a very different, um, very different philosophy, a very different upbringing. It has its benefits because it builds resilience, but it also has has its downsides because it's a lot of stress and it breaks a lot of people as well.

Yeah, yeah, but you made it, and all the training you received, as tough as they were, but it becomes who you are as an artist, and you can also contribute to this American society now. And then you move to the United States, and you, from Russia to Miami. Yes, yes, Wild West. So how, how is it? How, how, um, how did being in the United States expand or challenge your sense of artistic freedom?

I've been asked whether I have any regrets about moving to United States, and I said indeed I do have those, and People ask what those regrets are, and I say, well, I regret that I did not make the move earlier. I came here when the time was right, of course, and I came to Miami straight from Moscow, which was a crazy move, especially since my, my stipend, my scholarship, for whatever reason, was starting in the spring semester. So I came in January, and I came from very cold— it was a very cold, uh, winter, colder than average. And I'm coming to Miami, it's 85 degrees, and I'm opening the doors of the airport, this warm moist air washing my face. I'm like, oh my God, I'm supposed to study here? Like, what? Uh, but coming to Professor Rodriguez's class was one of the best decisions of my life, and he has been one of the most helpful and amazing teachers I've ever had, and extremely encouraging and extremely supportive in a way that he wanted me to be me, and he never tried to make a mini-me out of me. He was able to see my personal aspirations and personal features and helped me to realize them, even with that comment of, of what are you waiting for in Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata? Because that validation from him, and he's a a big Rachmaninoff person. That validation from him sort of opened a Pandora's box in me because I started writing Rachmaninoff transcription, but then about a month later I simultaneously started writing Ein Heldenleben and then something else and then something else. It just kind of like— my hunger grew and I started to satisfy it. It's been such an integral part of my life these days, and I started also to write transcriptions for piano for hands as I collaborate with a number of colleagues. And I love two-piano and four-piano playing because it's a type of chamber music that is very different from playing with other instruments. And I enjoy that very much. So I'm now brewing ideas for, for hand. To piano repertoire as well.

Can't wait for the next composition or transcription that comes out of you. But it's fascinating because you rediscovered basically Rachmaninoff in Miami, you know what I mean? Like, of all places, you know?

So yeah, yeah, in a sense, that's absolutely true.

Yes, that's wild.

Yeah, yeah. But about Miami, you know, I had very different perception of Miami. When you're not in Miami, the stereotype of that being a paradise touristy destination is so strong worldwide that people think, oh, Miami, beach, palms, I don't know, coconut water, and maybe some jet skiing and stuff like that. It's a very vibrant and rich and huge city, and it's one of the— its main benefits. It has still a lot of room to grow, and it's— many, many things are being invented in Miami. You know, I'm sure in about a decade Miami is going to be very close to New York City in terms of how many happenings are There's an Art Basel, there are so many new concert series and new ensembles, many, many things. And there are people there who like to be there and they want their communities to be culturally rich. University of Miami, where I went as a doctoral student and artist diploma after— did my artist diploma after that— transformed in these last 12, 14 years immensely. New A new concert hall was just recently opened there, which I was very honored to be a part of the opening of. And they built new buildings for the music school. They built a new hospital, new student dorms, and it just, it grows. And many new festivals have started and many new events. So it's, it's a very special place. And so it's very, very far from just being the beach and the palms, even though the beach and the palms are quite nice.

Yeah, yeah, I, I've lived in Florida, so I know what you mean. So, but is that where you met Liana Herron?

Uh, Liana and I met as students, uh, doctoral students. Okay, okay.

Professor Rodriguez actually introduced us for the first time because she mentioned, you know, she also traveled actually. She mentioned about, you know, coming out of Miami, so she drove herself to New York and then she came here. So yeah, yeah, I remember that. Wonderful. She's also a wonderful pianist.

Yes.

Now, yeah, I want to talk about your other part of you. You know, we talked about being a pianist, a composer, and, you know, arranger, but also you're a visual artist and poet. And actually you bring those all elements together into your multidisciplinary event or concert. So tell us, because you were way ahead of everybody, because now people are doing it. But since 2007, you have these pictures at the exhibition event and the Euphoria after Liszt and so many others. So tell us.

As I have mentioned, I've been drawing my entire life. This is something that I really, really loved. My mother also had this very fun idea of using catalogs of art museums that she and my dad were collecting as picture books for me. There is this funny photo of me at maybe 4 or 5 months old. I'm sitting on my mom's lap and we're examining the National Gallery of Washington, D.C.'s catalog, which is also— I must say this— in March I'm making my debut at Buenos Aires with Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra and I will be playing Amy Beach's South American premiere of her piano concerto with them, which is an enormous privilege and honor. But my mom has a faint link to that because many, many, many years ago my mom had a duo partner in Russia, a very wonderful violinist. Her name is Alia Gubaydullina. They've played many, many recitals together, and I witnessed them practicing together and everything. Alia at some point met a young man from Argentina who was from Buenos Aires, and eventually, which was very difficult to do during Soviet times, they got married and left. And for that period, their connection with my mom got unfortunately had to be put on pause because they couldn't meet and rehearse anymore. But they were sometimes able to send something from abroad. One of the gifts that this lady Alia sent to my mom was art catalog of National Gallery of Washington, D.C. that is present in that picture with me. So I grew up, uh, looking through that catalog hundreds of times. It became the, the portraits and the artwork in there became as familiar as if, you know, you have a Tom and Jerry, uh, you know, picture book or something like that. So it was like that. Oh, Perseus and Andromeda by Rubens, or like, oh, this and that. So I was so enamored by, by that, and it was such a normal thing that years later when I went to the gallery, National, yeah, I was walking around and crying because like I just saw in person every single picture that I knew by heart from being a toddler. It was, it was the most extraordinary thing. So needless to say, I spent a lot of my time as a child trying to copy. I would just try to trace and just make a copy and whatever. I was doing a lot of that, and I enjoyed drawing in also in a style close to beginning of 20th century ink artists such as Aubrey Beardsley and something like that. So it was a combination for me of different styles that I enjoyed doing, and that was fine. I was doing that, I was writing some poetry as well, all in their own timelines and their own realms, in a sense. One day in my late teens, it was actually my mom's idea and wondering— she's like, have you ever thought of drawing something about the music you're playing or writing something? And I thought that could be a very fruitful thought, especially since in the beginning it was more of a task for me because I don't think visually in music at all. Even when I play music that is openly programmatic, my sense of associations is not depictive in that instantaneous sense. So when I decided to attempt this, it was the time when I was initially absorbing and collecting Transcendental Letters, at least about 3 of them, and another 3, and another 2, and kind of that was coming together. And so I started doing drawings for these etudes and writing for these etudes, but it's more of a drawing that is inspired by the music rather than drawing that tries to depict the music. It's sort of a commentary on the music, but not an illustration. I don't illustrate, and I also don't describe in my poetry what is happening in the music. It's rather than what I hear puts me in a particular state, what, what do I think about that? So I like the process because it also kind of puts you as a thinker in music in a completely different state, because you're reflecting not as a performer, not as a listener, but as a thinker. Like, what it is that it draws me to in my thought. So I did that, and then I did drawings for Bach Vivaldi Klavier Book 1, and then I did, I did Mixed Technique series for 18 pieces of Tchaikovsky, Op. 72, his last piano cycle. Beautiful collection of pieces that are, other than his Meditations, are very, very rarely played. There is a video of the entire set from a live concert on my YouTube channel that I'm playing. It's a very, very beautiful, it's a very, very beautiful, colorful and very nostalgic music. He wrote it in his last year of life, which was intended like, ah, knickknacks, salon music, but it's actually much deeper than that. And then the last project that I'm also bringing on the road next fall is Pictures at an Exhibition with my own pictures. And that was very interesting work because I always felt of Pictures at an Exhibition as a very tragic work in general, despite so many major key movements. And my series kind of made it a little bit of a horror story.

Oh no.

But it's just, there was a viewer. I did premiere this series of artworks in New York City. I played right before the pandemic at the end of 2019. I played I concert at Rockefeller University's Kaspering Auditorium. They have big projectors. So I did a play there and there was an audience member that came and said like, it was very, very interesting to see how your fears manifested in these artworks. I'm like, that's right. Very keen view. I didn't even want to say like, no, no, no, no. Like, yeah. Yes. Good eye.

You couldn't even deny it. But yeah. So do you show your drawings while you're performing?

Yes. So, so the very first, uh, concert that I've done in 2007 with the Transcendental Etudes was, it was in a theater that had very, very tall hall, and they had a projector there and a screen that was— it was able to hang it vertically. All of my pictures are vertical for that cycle, and it was a massive huge screen. And also I had a microphone, so it was a recital in which before each work I would recite my poem and the picture would be projected. I would play the corresponding etude, and I would take a microphone, say another the picture would change. So it would be going like that. And it's not always possible in different venues to do it like that, but in most of them where I'm doing that, it is something that I do. I found through lots of tries and errors a method that works for changing the, the slides in the right time. I outsourced it to different people, but sometimes somebody was listening and kind of got absorbed and forgot to change the slides, things like that. And it's easier when you apply cyclical work such as Liszt Etudes because the etude clearly ends and then you can also you know, bow and what have you. But if you're playing like pictures in an exhibition, if you do not know where exactly one, because there are some of them out of tacka or whatever. So I use the same Bluetooth pedal that I use for my iPad, except that Bluetooth pedal is linked to a PowerPoint in my computer. That computer is hidden on stage and I'm just pressing the, the wizard pedal to change the slides and that works very well.

Yeah, that did— do you think like you needed to do that? Is that for your own sort of satisfaction, combining those? Or maybe you wanted to do a little bit more immersive experience for your audience because there was something maybe missing, you know what I mean? Like for modern audiences where maybe it's too much.

I don't think, I don't think, I don't think there's anything missing in music for anyone. I just think this is a sort of a commentary, a curiosity, something unusual. But also, a few years after I first time did the, the Liszt project, I started seeing different musicians coming up with presentations of other artists. Let's say we're doing a night of French music and we playing Debussy, Ravel, Chaminade, or whatever. And we have Monet, and we have Renoir, and Cézanne to kind of blend in together. So it's to create an atmosphere and also to help to focus on something that also You may listen to music plainly. You just listen to music. You may listen to music and think what associations you can have. But sometimes people listen to music and they see an artwork and they're like, huh, this is the association that this artist have, but I disagree. I have different association. And I like that people sometimes come, I don't really agree with what I saw in your picture. Because I felt this music was about something else, or I felt something else. I'm like, great, because you're going to walk out of the performance having your own opinion of what you felt about this music because you had a trigger. So the point is not to help you to understand. It's not my view and my drawing and my artwork is just sort of a screenshot of my mind at the time when I did make these images. But since I made them, my opinion may have changed. And even in Transcendental Medusa, sometimes I think like, now that almost 20 years passed, it's time to make new ones because there's so many new ideas that I have. And they also may come in a clash with someone else's opinions, which is good. It's a little bit in parallel with an activity that I'm doing as a part of my outreach things that I'm doing through my organization Music for Minds. I go to classrooms and I play unabridged repertoire for kids. I know that the best thing to get someone interested in something is to overwhelm. Nobody wants to hear "Mary Little Had a Little Lamb" or "Nutcracker" or something that is already so well known. You want to play something that people like, "Ah, we had no idea!" You know, and what I do, I come to classroom and I play 4 or 5 short works for them that have programmatic element to them, let's say, Ravel's Andine, or Chopin's Polonaise, which is dance, or something like, I don't know, Balakirev's Islamey, I play it for kids sometimes, Rage Over Lost Penny, him. It's not too short, not too long, but I also request that every kid has paper and colorful pencils. And I tell them, I'm going to play for you this and this piece, it is about that and that and that, and you listen to that and that and that in this piece. So I point to certain key moments And then I want them to draw what they hear. And then at the end of the class, you see wild array of ideas. And also, you know, you have 30 kids, typically in 30 kids, you have 2 or 3 people who have clear talent for visual art. There's something like enormously elaborate that was created out of scratch in 9 minutes. Or like in 7 minutes or something completely like unusual in thought and reaction. But it also makes kids listen deliberately. They're trying to listen to get feedback for themselves to draw, right? So it ups the chances that they would remember what they heard besides just, you know, being educated, like, oh, this is Beethoven, this is, you know. So, uh, it triggers. So I, I like it because it's a, it's a kind trigger. It's not something that is going to spark, uh, any much of a debate, but it is going to focus listeners, uh, memory on what they heard.

So you spoke about your community outreach, so Music for Minds. Tell us a little bit more. You mentioned about, okay, you bring all these pieces. You said short pieces, but they are extremely difficult. Islamay is very difficult, you know, FYI. Anyway, so you perform these pieces for these children. Is that what you do, or is there any other elements to your organization?

The organization initially was formed after I had first of these kind of experiences. Back in 2012, I became gold medalist at Nina Widemann Piano Competition in Shreveport, Louisiana. And then competition music director, unless Sandra Wilson, who unfortunately passed away last year, but she was an incredible human being, trained as a pianist and a singer. She had a big operatic and concert vocal career, and she also was a very good pianist. And she arranged for this competition to not just have monetary prize prize, but to have a lineup of concerts for the winner, and she would travel with the winner to all of these concerts to support, to present them, and to teach them certain things about concert life in the meantime. One of the first concerts that I did was a solo recital in Jackson, Mississippi, and she Literally, maybe the night before I had to perform, she said, you know, we have a very wonderful arts school, private school, St. Andrew's School here, and they were just wondering whether you would agree to come in the morning and play a little bit for the kids. And it was just like an impromptu situation. She asked me that in the evening. Of course, if we were to do that, it had to be like 8:30 or 9 in the morning. So just like, we go there and we're literally driving there. I'm like, oh my God, what do I, what do I, I have no idea, like demographics, how old they are. What do I do? I don't have anything that kind of necessarily matches that kids' repertoire or something that you do for children. And I have a big program to play in the evening. And I come in, we walk through the hallways, and there is a main hallway, um, in the school. There is a suspiciously beaten-looking upright piano in the corner. And about 200 kids on the floor from, I think, first through third grade or fourth grade. It was just like enormous audience. And they're all on the floor and they're all impatient and they're all rustling and, you know, so I'm like, I'm just going to play.— excerpt from my recital program. I said— and Islamayr was actually part of that program. So I said, "Well, kids, I'm going to play 3 works for you." One was Beethoven's 32 Variations in C minor. For first graders, they were explained what Beethoven is, what the variation cycle is, what this thing, what is the variation, what to listen for. It is, it's fairly short, not too short, but like 11 minutes. They were listening. Then I played Gaspar Ullán Mín. The first, first half of my concert, I did not play the entire thing for them, but I played the Andina. I narrated the poem for them. And you know, in that, in that poem The character of Ardene is trying to seduce this man to join her in the underwater world and become the king of the rivers and things. She describes her life and everything, and he tells her, "Thank you so much, but I love a mortal woman." And then she gets She laughs, she gets angry and disappears in the streams of water. So I got to the point, but he replies, I'm sorry, but I love mortal girl. And every girl in that room goes, weee! Needless to say, needless to say, I have been playing Andean almost at every outreach event ever since. And a variation of that reaction is almost always present. They love that. So then I tell them that you need to listen to that moment. There would be a pause and then it would be this one line and then it would be the, ooh, there would be this cascade. And they really link to that. They want to hear when this rejection happens. They're so enthralled. To find out. And then I played at the end of Islamey, and during Islamey, the audience was, I mean, not completely silent, but they were quiet. And then after the performance, I had a line of, I don't know, 40 kids with questions like, oh, we didn't know the piano can sound like that, we didn't know Oh, my parents wanted me to take lessons. I didn't know this could be. Oh, I want to take more piano now. They were all excited because there was a shock moment, right? They could not expect something like this. And then I realized, aha, that's the way to do it. So we're not doing something condescending and abridged or whatever. Hitting them with all what we have, because they totally can get it, and they get excited from that. Because our competitors is video games, cartoons with very elaborate music. Video games now have very elaborate score. Everything is big sound, very, very colorful. Everything is attacking your senses, right? So you have to provide Same impact. And so I, at some, a few months after that, I registered, uh, uh, organization because I realized I cannot go to a school without having a credible name of a nonprofit organization because most, most schools are very suspicious of individuals. So you have to have something that has a history of doing that. And, and, and One of those missions for my organization was education of this kind, but also an ability to create music series with unusual programming. I did 3 years of a festival with academy in Baltimore. It was called Festival Baltimore. It was done before the pandemic, 2017 through 2019. The mission was crazy. It was a festival of complete cycles. Every concert was presenting a complete collection of works in a certain instrumentation. 24 Liszt etudes, all of the Liszt etudes, let's say. 5 Beethoven cello sonatas in one night. Complete works of Paul Creston for alto saxophone and piano. Complete Hindemith viola sonatas in 2 evenings. Complete Works for Viola and Clarinet by Robert Schumann with Piano. You know, these kind of surveys, they were recruited students to form concerts like this too. Our first year, we recruited 3 pianists and 12 string players to have a concert of complete Brahms piano quartets. And all of the artists who came to perform the concerts, they were coaching the students. So the students got a very multifaceted coaching. The second year we did complete Tchaikovsky string quartets and complete Rachmaninoff piano duos. So just a very kind of, uh, unusual look on programming, but also a little bit of resistance. In that because worldwide concert programs are shrinking. When I was growing up, a recital program was first half 50 minutes, second half 45 minutes. That was a norm. Now they tell you first half 30 minutes, second 25. Like, what is that? That's a joke to me. I mean, right? So having experience of growing up like that, but that also means that audiences are gradually getting more impatient. It is also influenced by television, and it's now well studied that in the '70s there were certain TV— 7-minute TV shows that kind of framed people's attention to 7 minutes at a time. And so it's more difficult to hear longer works. So I think when you can entice a person that, yes, you're going to be in a concert for more than 2 more than 2 hours, but in those 2 or 2 and a half hours you're gonna hear a lifetime of a composer in this particular genre, right? You're gonna hear all Beethoven cellosonatas that are stretched throughout his life, or you're gonna hear all of the works of, you know, Paul Hindemith that also were not written at the same time, they were written over a period of time. We had A colleague of mine, fantastic pianist Randy Lupa, played at my request complete piano sonatas of George Walker. And those 5 piano sonatas span 56 years of his life. And you see there, the, the concert itself is just an hour. The sonatas are not very long, but in those, that hour, you hear how composers' language was changing from sonata to sonata. And that's absolutely amazing. And there's definitely a demographic of the audience that appreciates that and is interested in that. We had come— people come with scores to our concerts and sitting with scores listening. That's the best thing. That's the biggest compliment. Wow.

That is incredible. Then you also created this concert series, uh, Festival Flatiron, and I meant to go last summer because you started last summer, right? Yes, this past— yeah. And then I saw the advertisement on Facebook or something, I think so, or maybe I'm part of this email thread or through GroupMuse. And so, but you play this Chopin's Concerto with a smaller ensemble.

Yeah, it was our It was our closing night. One of my mentors, Kevin Kenner, with whom I studied during my artist diploma at the University of Miami, he created together with his colleagues a new arrangement for piano and string quintet of both Chopin concertos. And he recorded— there's a fantastic recording of of his. Everyone needs to listen to that, it's beautiful. And he was extremely kind to share with me these scores and let me perform them. So the closing night of our series was these two concertos, which we played in the order of completion, because the second concerto was— earlier, so we played 2nd Concerto in the first half and 1st Concerto in the second half. And it was a beautiful experience because the string players can now play from iPad, they can play from full score, they do not need conductor, they can just follow you like in chamber music so closely. So it was beautiful experience, so beautiful that this coming year I I am cooking something along those lines. I can't quite yet say what that is, but it will be announced in the beginning of the year.

So you'll be continuing this Flatiron—

We are going to continue the series. Yes, it's going to be having very, very interesting programs and some tributes to— there would be a concert attributed to Shostakovich with all of his duo sonatas. Violin Sonata and Cello Sonata and Viola Sonata. There will be some very, very beautiful music played, but also would be a festival finale that also features some piano concertos with strings.

Where exactly is the venue? Flatiron? So that's in Manhattan? I love Flatiron District.

Yeah, it's in that district.

Take place at a certain venue? Because GroupMUSE is about bringing the concert to homes and almost like basically providing salon music.

There is a fantastic— he's a pianist himself, an extremely talented pianist, but also he has made his career in finance and he is a philanthropist. His name is Jonathan de Perry. A few years back, he moved to Flatiron District, and he looking for an apartment that the primary objective was not a place to live in, but a place to hold concerts in. So he bought a loft that has a wonderful acoustics, sits up to about 80 people. He has a an incredible piano, which we later discovered is the piano on which I did my Carnegie Hall debut at the Stern in 2017. He bought a Hamburg Steinway for the Stern Auditorium. It's a beautiful instrument, one of the finest instruments in recital space in Manhattan, and he holds about 30 concerts a year in his home. It is his passion. In some of them he participates himself. We have a traditional four-hand program that we play every year together. But also he likes to present music that otherwise one would not hear anywhere else. So he heard about my aspirations with Festival Baltimore that we came to conclusion in that location, he's like, well, maybe you want to do something interesting in my space, and you're welcome to do that. So it is an honor to do it there, but it also allows me to again do interesting programming and do things that are really hard to find somewhere else.

So I know we're coming toward the end of our conversation, but before we go, uh, is there any other things like we didn't cover, or maybe something to promote?

Well, I would say that there are many things that I look forward to in this coming year of 2026. I will be making my South American debut with Buenos Aires, and right after that, the following week, I'll go to Santiago and play with National Symphony of Chile. I will be playing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. There are many beautiful collaborations that I'm looking forward to this year, but there will be some time spent in the recording studio as well. I will be in February recording my beautiful and beloved program of Liszt's Complete Etudes And also later in the year, I will embark on recording the Rachmaninoff.

Oh my goodness, wonderful, wonderful. So for our listeners, please visit Asiya Korepanova.com and connect with her through her social media accounts, uh, Instagram @pianist_asiya and YouTube at her, the Instagram @emasiakorepanova, to learn more about her projects, performances, and latest updates. Now before I let you go, we have to do one more thing, The Piano Pod rapid-fire questions. And then now we take this segment very seriously. You've shared your stories, expertise today, but these questions will, may reveal who you truly are. So let's do this.

Okay, okay, okay.

So Please answer each question as shortest response as possible. No explanation is necessary. Level 1, question number 1: What is your comfort food?

Oh, it's a good question. Um, roasted eggplant. Great, so good.

How do you like your coffee in the morning?

Uh, with a tiny bit of cream.

Cats or dogs? Mm.

I had cats a number of times. I had a dog once. I would say both. And at the same time, I would say I cannot afford having a pet with my schedule of traveling and with my husband's travel. He has also a career that has travel. So About every maybe 6 to 8 weeks we open Petfinder. We browse through available pets in our area. We sigh, we close, and we move on. In about 2 months this process repeats. I get it.

Sunrise or sunset?

Both.

Summer or winter?

I can't, I can't, because when I moved to Miami, I spent 5 and a half years in Miami. In the beginning, I was just like, oh my God, there's no seasons there. How can I be without my seasons? 5 years later, I'm like, who needs seasons? Like, I want this eternal Summer. Summer. And then I moved up to Boston and I was completely miserable first winter because I lost all of my tolerance. But we had snow yesterday and a lot of people are complaining. I'm so happy when snow comes in. I, yeah. So I think I, I, it's 50/50. Definitely.

All right, level 2. What skill have you always wanted to learn but haven't had a chance to?

Uh, playing a string instrument.

Oh yeah, that's a good one. What is your word or words to live by?

I can, I can have a feeling in my head, but I, I guess I don't typically manifest it in, in, in, in literary way, but I can describe it as I have endless curiosity, um, and I love trying things, and it brings me a great joy to do things by my hands, whatever creative process there is. And I always try to do more because It's just, it teaches, you know. So I guess that could be, that could be a broad answer to your question.

Any favorite venue you ever performed in or dream venue, maybe?

It's really hard. It is really hard to pick one because of course there are legendary venues that you always dream to go. And to play to. Growing up as a little student in Moscow, like, the biggest dream is to play in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory. Of course, you play in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, then I wanted to play in an international venue, then go and play in different places. And I played in Carnegie Hall, and it was of course such a milestone. And I'm about to play in Theater Cologne next year, which is also another milestone. But sometimes small venues or venues that you don't expect to be anything special becomes the most special in your, in your entire life. I will give you a couple of examples I had experienced. Playing in juvenile prison for boys between 14 and 17 years of age that committed different kinds of crimes.

Is that in the United States?

No, it was in Russia. Oh, I was in Russia, and I, I came there and I played a lot of kind of unassuming repertoire for them. I played things that most of them probably have never heard before, and probably have not heard since, but one of the works that I played was Schubert's small A major sonata. There is this room of about 200 of them, And there's a, of course, military units, and everyone is, you know, sort of supposed to behave. And the piano is not very good, it's an upright, and I'm playing, and there's this very interesting silence that comes from both them not quite understanding what to do with what they hear, but also from objectifying me because, you know, as they walk by me, they, you know, say things, and they probably haven't seen a real girl for a while, so they kind of like look at me in a certain way. But then after the performance, there are a few guys that come through and they're in tears, and they say, we didn't know we don't know what it is, but we haven't heard this music before, we don't know what it is, but we just, we, we couldn't help crying. That was Schubert. And you know, when you ask about what's the venues and what's the most memorable concert experience, this experience comes in the first few most overwhelming ones. Because it's just this act of sharing and kind of connecting so deeply that such outcome happens, you know. Or also, if you have an experience of playing for someone who is on their deathbed and you know that your performance is the last thing they would ever hear in this life, it also becomes some of the most important venues of your lifetime, even if it is someone's bedroom where you brought a keyboard to play, you know. So there's all sorts of experiences, the glorious and shiny ones, and not so glorious but shiny in a different way.

Beautifully said. That's great. Well said. So the last question: fill in the blank, music is blank.

Eternity.

Beautiful. Thank you, Asia. Thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your artistry, your journey, and thoughtful reflections with such openness. Of course, and depth and generosity. You're an amazing person. So to our audience, if you would like to explore more of Asia's incredible work, visit asia-korepanova.com and explore her for performances, compositions, multimedia projects, and educational initiatives. And of course, a huge thank you, all of you, to our dedicated listeners for tuning in today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song and share and review this episode on your favorite podcast— uh, favorite platform and tag us @ThePianoPod. It's one of the best ways to help our community grow, and we love hearing sharing your feedback. For the latest updates, guest news, and stories that inspire creativity and connection, follow The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song on Substack, TikTok, and LinkedIn. We'll see you in the next episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Thank you, Asia, once again. Appreciate you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.