Biography of Boris Savelyev

His life was full of dramatic turns and conflicts. When Bore was 10 years old, his mother died, his father soon went to his new wife - and Boris remained in the arms of a summer sister, who became his second mother. Already at the age of 16, Boris went to work at the plant and there, in a musical circle, for the first time joined the music. Borya had a lot and stubbornly played sports and achieved phenomenal results: he became a master of sports in bullet shooting and fell into the junior composition of the Dynamo football club - as a goalkeeper.

But the love of music overpowered sport. This happened when Borya served in the army in a military orchestra his daughter Masha wrote to me: "It is interesting that the dad in the army made a drum with his own hands, on which he played in the army ensemble." During the army service, Boris Savelyev continued the filigree drum tradition of the pioneers of the post -war jazz generation Valery Bulanov and Valery Bagiryan, which is already inaccessible to modern eardrum.

This tradition was expressed, first of all, in an intelligent game in the accompaniment, in a phenomenal sound and in an amazing drive, about which the guitarist Alexei Kuznetsov said: "Borina the game was in line with the Bulanovsky school and was distinguished by the unusual intelligence and phenomenal sound of the plate." He, too, like Boris, practically did not play Solo, but without an amazing drive, Filly could not take place of Davis’s ascetic manner, when Miles could play only two notes in four beats, and that was enough.

But these two notes gained meaning only when Filly Jones created a swing of the highest energy, sweeping away everything in its path like a tsunami. Here is Saveliev, Bagiryano-Bulanov style, similar to Jones. After the restaurant in Sheremetyevo, where he played in the Tovmasyan ensemble, Boris went to work north: then many Moscow musicians went to work in the cold lands.

From this period there was a photo of Boris in the Nenets Malice. Boris Savelyev during the years of work in the north, his attitude towards the eardrum was very demanding. Here is how the drummer Evgeny Ryaba says about this in an article for the Music Box magazine, dedicated to the international exhibition of musical instruments “Music Moscow”, he decided to purchase Jazz 18 drums and a set of Istanbul Mel Lewis plates, which later did.

He, like the vast majority of drummers, was confident that the best tools were maple, and even began to probe the question of the possibility of buying a Jazz 18 [...] maple set, but I dissuaded it. The arguments were extremely simple. I said that now there are birch drums in front of you, and they sound good. They are conceived as birch. What will happen in maple performance - no one knows.

Maple is not a panacea. I immediately led Boris to the Artist Maple’s maple’s maple set [...] and demonstrated unexpectedly the very modest possibilities of these drums, [which] ... did not correspond to the musical tasks that Boris had to solve. At the beginning of x, when the famous decree of the Minister of Culture was published, which forbade the work of musicians without education, Boris, like many masters of Jazz Arzu Guusseinov, Nikolai Panov, Mikhail Okun, entered the muzyliemchita “Behind the crust”.

He went to the Musical School of the Moscow Region Elektrostal. There I had a chance to meet him. I wrote about the teachers of the school “Jazz Railway Academy”: each member of our “Railway Academy” had extraordinary qualities. So, the saxophonist Viktor Alekseev had the best jazz library in the Union. All samizdat schools, collections of topics, as well as the best records, were with him.

Volodya Chernov brilliantly knew English and translated us “Down Beat” or an annotation printed on an envelope of a particular jazz plate. Thanks to him, we were aware of all jazz events. Borya Savelyev brought us drum schools. I remember, we vividly discussed the samizdat work on the rhythm of the St. Petersburg drummer Valery Myosovsky, in which he tried to explain the phenomenon of jazz energy of the swing in terms of Indian rhythmic culture, using rhythmic models of Ragi, such as Tal and Rupak-Tal.

But the main thing is that I played with Borea in the ensemble of teachers, which included Yuri Markin F-no, Mikhail Esakov Gitar, Vladimir Chernov Bas. The paradox, but the student Savelyev, as a master who owns the secrets of jazz drums, also taught at the school. Our ensemble with a triumph performed at the jazz festival of the Moscow Moskvorechye studio, and Boris’s powerful Gruvs provided us with success.

As a student, Savelyev was supposed to play in the student band, and our one -performance at the festival at Moskvorechye ended with a scandal. Then at the festival one American Mayans was sounded, and we prepared a fank program with two shock plants behind the second drums was played by Andrei Shatunovsky or Boris Kovalsky. I remember that we played the Discobol Fank-Pesus, which we wrote together with Yuri Markin-Part A, I-Part B, so we almost thwarted the festival: such a scandal began that it was simply impossible to continue the concert.I was already dressed in a neighboring building, and the host Alexei Batashev ran into my room with the words: "Go play something to them, we cannot continue the concert." And since all the musicians had already fled to the station in order to catch the electric train, I went out and played at the La-Do-Sol-Fa Flugelhorn, Tchaikovsky’s motive “I love you”-and the audience, realizing that there would be no bead, calmed down.

Of course, this span could not have taken place without a frantic junk of drums, which put everyone on his ears. Elektrostal Band. The triumph after the performance of the Discobol, I can not say that Savelyev was eagerly invited to play experimental, non -standard music. For example, the composer Yuri Chugunov often called him to play his music, saturated with bright, fresh, “cast -iron” melodies, spicy scrubs and exquisite rhythm.

It so happened that, due to the constant complaints of neighbors about the noise of the drums, Saveliev had to exchange an apartment at the River Station for an Arbat apartment in Panfilovsky Lane, which was on the first, basement. He himself was sound -insulated and Boris was a very handy man, and therefore jazz there could sound around the clock. But especially the Arbat apartment “unfolded” after Volodya Danilin moved to live with Boris for a year and a half.

All jazz Moscow fell there. Moreover, the very young Leningraders - saxophonist Igor Butman, guitarist Andrei Ryabov, bassist Dmitry Kolesnik came to this apartment right from the station. Vladimir Danilin said: “We had nothing day and night - only jazz, jazz, jazz! But few people know that this movement of jazz artists began with Boris Savelyev. He was so fond of drawing that he even passed the exam in Stroganovka, but because of the illness he could not study there.

So, it was Boris who taught Danila to draw, and the rest of the jazzmen reached for him. Two posters that Boris painted for his ensemble was preserved. They can see that he was a good drawer. Danila and Borea poured into a magnificent project-“Rainbow Quartet”, named Jazz-Kafe on Nizhny Novgorod Street. It was in the dashing e. Here is how Andrei Tovmasyan writes about this period in his book: in the spring of the year, Volodya invited me to a small basement “KRISIS genre”, located somewhere in the center of Moscow.

I was there only three times there. Jazz in the basement sounded on Sundays. The action began at 9 pm and ended at 10 pm. Only an hour. Well, a little good. It used to be wrong, jazz performances lasted an hour. Times are changing. They played with the composition: Danilin-the accordion, Borya Savelyev-the shock, Igor Kondur-Bas, the former Lundstremovets Stas Grigoryev played on the tenor-saxophone, which Volodya often talked about, and I finally listened to him.

My mother and I helped out this very much. Such a manifestation of friendship is far from trifle ... And Boris had such an attitude towards people in blood. So, when the saxophonist Konstantin Gorshkov, Bore, managed to buy a one -room apartment on the Black Sea, in the scarlet, - he invited the Jazzmen family to rest there, which, unlike pops, never differed in frantic fees.

It is impossible not to mention the work of Boris Savelyev in the Oleg Lundstrem orchestra in the year, and he played there on the carts on the drums, was Ivan Yurchenko, then Tovmasyan and Danilin, who gathered friends in Bende, played with him at Oleg Leonidovich. During perestroika, when all the musical work was covered with a copper basin, Boris drove cars from Europe.

And his friends - the bassist Igor Kondur and the saxophonist Kostya Gorshkov - are incredibly grateful to Bore, because they drove for a long time on cars driven by their friend. Moreover, Boris perfectly drove the car and taught his friends to drive the skill at night when there are no traffic jams in Moscow. The group played for several years in the basement of the cafe "Crisis of the Genre" on the Arbat and gave thematic concerts, for example - dedicated to the work of Frank Sinatra; Then Yuri Shikhin, the soloist of the orchestra named after Oleg Lundstrem.

This is especially audible in his game with Alexei Kuznetsov and Vladimir Danilin. So, when his daughter Masha fell ill at the summer, she asked her father a soft toy - a donkey. And Boris immediately, taking a needle with a thread and gathering flap, sewed a luxurious toy, which is still alive. He himself made all the furniture for his Northern House, which serves today. Boris stood out sharply in the Bohemian jazz Moscow appearance: he was always perfectly dressed, there were always branded jackets, magnificent shirts, and instead of a tie - a neck scarf.

For this scarf, friends called him for the eyes of Jean Mare: with this French actor, Boris had a great similarity in his youth. Bori's face was distinguished by amazing expressiveness. During the game, even if the sound was not heard, it was possible to determine the nature of the music in the face of Bori.With the same plasticity and expressiveness, who remembers the play of Vladimir Zhuravsky, who highlighted him so much among other drummers that some called the Zhuravsky monkey, of course, in a good sense.

Bori was able to convey this facial expressiveness in his photo a wonderful photo artist Pavel Korbut in his photo. Once, at the end of X, when Boris was at the peak of his dependence, he suddenly left his body and saw himself sleeping on the bed, and he himself hung a meter from his body. But bad luck, it was not possible to enter in any way. After that, ”Borya finished his story,“ all my dependencies disappeared.

” Of course, this event could not but affect his fate, his attitude to the world, people and music. It becomes clear why Boris’s daughter, Masha, told us at the funeral: “Today, the words of my dad suddenly began to acquire a completely different, deeper and even in some way prophetic meaning.” I think this is not by chance. Only the words of a person who took place in life and gained experience of other worlds begin to live on earth with some mysterious life over time and have the power to change something in our life.

I, who was familiar with Fr. Alexander Menem, I know this well. When I wrote an obituary, I was not left by the thought that our Borya is a giant of the level of Valery Bulanova, a man fantastically gifted and selflessly serving jazz. So why did neither I nor others noticed this and treated this great jazz drummer, as an ordinary jazzman? I think the point is the pathological modesty of Boris, in which he looks like his friend Vladimir Danilin.

Other musicians are actively promoting themselves wherever possible, and Borya never gave anyone a reason to understand that he was a great musician.