In some aspects Russia is the opposite of the West and the Far East: the country is a vast territory with bad communication. A typical rock musician's joke is, "How can we speak of Russian rock if there is nowhere to plug in? It's true there are areas, which still lack electricity. Even a devoted music lovers won't travel, say, 60 miles back home after a concert late at night in a dark and dangerous suburbian train and then wait for the last bus to his/her village. The discrepancy between metropolitain capital cities and the provinces has increased with during wild capitalism. The times when TV speakers pronounced the names of the avantgarde artists with respect are far behind. An artist did not add anything neither to old Communist party functioners nor to the new breed of bureaucrats. Both discovered that besides some prestige there is nothing in New Music to care about - neither big fame nor big money.

Actually, the state of New Music in Russia correlates to the formation of the middle-class social stratum, but this development should be discussed elsewhere. When the price of an imported CD equals an average pension (a homemade disc is only twice as cheap). After the financial crisis of August 1998 a CD becomes a kind of luxury, not an article of daily supply and demand. Of course, this concerns also quality music instruments, sheet music etc.

There are a few (state supported) FM stations that work in classic music format only in capital cities like Moscow and St Petersburg. That means that they reach less than 10% of its audience. The Moscow Radio "Orpheus" now devotes just 2-4% of its airplay to the 20th century music. I suspect "Orpheus" officials would be glad to get rid of presumable avantgarde completely, but "Orpheus" is part of European Broadcasting Union and is almost forced to program some 20th century music to fulfill its international obligations.

Twenty of 30 composers-members of ASM (this stands for "Association of New Music), founded by the late Edisson Denisov, have left country for good, and many well-known performers as well. Of course, some of them return back or often perform in Russia. But this concerns mainly elder musicians who are probably nostalgically attached to their homeland like the pianist Alexey Lyubimov, the founder of the first new music festival "Alternativa". He is now the head of the department of authentic performance of Ancient music (but he managed to smuggle a course in new performing styles). For example, 44-year old Alexander Raskatov who is, in my opinion, is a composer of Alfred Schnitke significance has never visited Russia since he made Heidelberg (Germany) his home 4 years ago.

On the contrary, a New York born composer and musicologist Anton Rovner, a brilliant young alumnus of the Rutgers University (New Jersey USA), where he studied with Milton Babbit. Or the Austrian conductor Werner Freisitzer who is much more often heard in Moscow than in Vienna. Not to mention a host of Latin Americans who made Russia their second homeland like Freddy Cadena, founder of the Chamber orchestra "Amadeus", or the extremely gifted and skillful electroacoustic composer Jorge Campos of Equador. After 1991, it was cheaper to travel to Russia and hire an orchestra for a week or more, than to pay for one recording session in the USA. It was a kind of the Gold Rush - anyone who had any relation to Russia and had not made it somewhere else, was digging his or her gold mine in Moscow. A flow of mediocrities did not stop until the August crisis. Now a lot of them remember that they still have their green cards or have other than Russian citizenship.

Now let me "accentuate the positive". The most visible, audible results are available in recorded form. Some of the music appeared on CDs - thanks to small independent labels like "SoLyd Records" (the underground group of intuitive improvisation "Astrea" who included composers Sofia Gubaidulina, Vyacheslav Artyomov, Viktor Suslin, Mark Pekarski and a jazz singer Valya Ponomareva). The new "Long Arms" issued some Anton Batagov and Alexei Lyubimov doing Russian minimalist works. The German "Col legno" label produced two collections of the Russian avantgarde - the first one will be described later and the second one - selected works recorded during the Alternativa-90.

Slightly more than a decade ago, there were only two performing units in Moscow specializing in New music: Chamber Ensemble of the soloists of Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Mark Pekarski Percussion Ensemble. None of the musicians earned enough money for a living by performing only new music. Mark Pekarski was member of the "Madrigal" Ensemble, the first Soviet group which played music if the European Renaissance. Madrigal was founded in the beginning of the 1960s by the then avant-garde composer Andrei Volkonski who was raised as an immigrant in Switzerland found himself in the Soviet Union in the gloomy 40s and re-emigrated in 1973).

By the way, the tradition to be both Ancient and avantgarde music survived until now. The Violin player Tatyana Grindenko leads Academy of Old Music but commissions a collective work 'The Seasons" (The Russian Premiere at the Alternativa-96) from her husband (she has been previuosly married to her colleague Guidon Kremer ) Vladimir Martynov, Ivan Sokolov, Tso Chen Guan and Alexander Bakshi. The "Alternativa" Festival also discovered the avantgarde potential of the late Dmitri Pokrovski and his folk choir. He even had dropped the label "folk" from its title. After the untimely death of Pokrovski, his Choir split into two units, but both continue to be active in both folk music and avantgarde performance art fields. Pokrovski, an authority in the West, had Peter Gabriel produced his CD for his RealWorld label. Elektra/Explorer also issued Pokrovski's version of "Les Noces" by Igor Stravinsky, sandwiched among Russian folk songs the composer used in his classic work.

Nazar Kozhukhar, a brilliant viola player who doubles in violin, leads Moscow Conservatory Old Music Ensemble, but is a champion of the postminimalist trend. His ensemble is a vehicle for the young composer Pavel Karmanov and his witty "instrumental theatre" works, "Fire Music" with the real fireworks or Forellen-quintett, in the later the leader of the Ensemble fries trout in front of the platform. The composer Karmanov also plays keyboards in the Ensemble 4:33 christened by this author. Since 1994 it has become sort of the home-band for the Alternativa Festival. The Ensemble 4:33 and its leader the composer and violin player Alexei Aigi are the Russian answer to Philip Glass/Steve Reich or Michael Nyman minimalist bands and it is extremely popular among Moscow elite. But Ensemble 4:33 is not just a vehicle for minimalists; it plays Toru Takemitsu and Morton Feldman for example.

Yet the two main propagandists of New Music are New Music Studio founded a couple of years ago at the Moscow Conservatory and ASM-Ensemble (or Moscow Ensemble for Contemporary music). New Music Studio's spiritual leader is the professor of composition Vladimir Tarnopolski. The New Music studio started to restore the works of the early Soviet avantgarde of the 20s (Nikolai Roslavets a. o.). But now under Igor Dronov they broadened their scope. For example in November 1998 they played a program of modern Dutch music to celebrate the planned visit of the Queen of Netherlands. Due to the illness of the president of Russian Federation the visit was postponed, but the Festival, nevertheless, took place in the scheduled weekend November 23-25.

In distinction from New Music Studio, which lately split into two units; now the Conservatory has also "New Studio" led by Alex Morogovski, the recorder and (bass) clarinet player. The ASM Ensemble consists not of post-graduate students, but of the cream of the Russian orchestral musicians (the Bassoon player Valery Popov). It was founded by one of the leaders of the Soviet avantgarde, Edisson Denisov, in 1990 as a part of the Assosiation for Modern Music (ASM), the aformentioned organization which still acts within the old Union of Composers.

The artistic director Yuri Kasparov and the conductor Alexei Vinogradov do all their best for the ASM-Ensemble to survive. The ASM-Ensemble recorded more than five dozens CDs for the Russian Lad label Japanese Meldac, French and even Korean labels and tours extensively. Due to the proper management ASM-Ensemble rely mainly on international projects, performing Russian music abroad and foreign music in Moscow thanks to sponsorship from cultural centers of Western countries such as the German Goethe Institute. The progress of private enterprise resulted in formation of the Moscow New Choir by Elena Rastvorova, the only choral unit of its kind in the capital of Russia. The only regular new music festival under communists were the annual report of Moscow, Leningrad and other local branches of the official Union of Composers.

Moscow Autumn was the most representative, but the scope was narrowed to the styles approved by Communist Party functioners. Of course, creative musicians managed to "smuggle" actual new music (the opera"L'ecume de jour" by Edisson Denisov in 1983 or a Kancheli symphony, for example). But such exceptions were "rare birds". In the 1990s, Moscow Autumn broadened its repertoire, foreign performers were invited, and Russians were permitted to program their concerts by them. The most successful, without doubt, was Moscow Autumn of 1997. It included, besides its regular and mainly colorless stuff, The Tribute to the late Edisson Denisov (three concerts of ASM-Ensemble) and "Post-avant-garde Passions" the international composers conference organized by the composer and musicologist Viktor Yekimovski and Tom Johnson (the observer of the Village Voice during the 1970s). Heated arguments were normal during morning discussions. The polemics between Elena Ganchikova (who was tutored in Paris IRCAM) against the American Alvin Lucier reflected the European-American debate, known for years: structure against sound, form against freedom, calculation against intuition, model against happening.

There was also the ill-fated Soviet International new Music Festival launched in the beginning of 1980s, but only the third and the last one were successful, since it had almost no ideological constraints or party control. Both the Moscow Conservatory and the Tchaikovsky halls were being repaired at the time, so the Third festival was moved to Leningrad. And the city on Neva River hosted the epitome of decadent evil, according to communist music critique, i.e. John Cage for the first and last time.

Luckily, part of the Festival has been released as a collection of 5 CDs on the German "Col legno" label and therefore is available elsewhere. Moscow also wanted something fresh, and Alexei Lyubimov organised Alternativa-? (question mark has since been dropped) an official sponsored concert organisation. Stylistically, Alternativa started from restoring the Soviet music history: works of forgotten avantgardists of the 20s (Roslavets to Deshevov), emigrees Lourie to Part, underestimated contemporaries (Karamanov, Schnitke, Gubaidulina, Mansurian) were performed for the first time. Then came Western serialists, postmodernists, Dadaists and minimalists. Since Alexei Lyubimov, a child prodigy pianist turned Philip Glass fan Anton Batagov and an emigree pianist /composer Alexander Rabinovitch, are champions of minimalism. They even managed to do 'Six pianos" by Steve Reich at the Tchaikovsky Hall for an audience of no less than 2000.

In 1992 came one-year pause, since the Soviet structures were in confusion, a lot of them ceased to exist. But in 1993 the Alternativa Festival was alive and well again due to Anton Batagov and this author who agreed to turn his live-radio show into a new music Festival. The format of my program "Contrasts" was what its title says- "folklore to avantgarde." Alternativa since then reflects all the trends in new music, save for commercialized pop - minimalism, serialism or not. Alternativa hosted such diverse but well-known musicians as the Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt and the British progressive-rocker Peter Hammill's Van der Graaf Generator, Japanese avant-DJ Otomo Yoshihide and the Swiss expert on Giacinto Scelsi Marianne Schroeder. It was the first festival in Russia to feature hi-tec of the local Theremin-centre and the computer experiments of Max Matthews and Jon Appleton of the USA. As was mentioned earlier, the only Russian answer to minimalist units like Michael Nyman band or Steve Reich & Musicians was a brain-child of Alternativa, i.e. Ensemble 4:33. With the new centre "Dom" (Russian for "House/Home") which hi-tec "MIDI-Alternativa-999" has recently opened (with the likes of Daniel Goode, Johnny Reinhard of New York, Elisabeth Schimana of Vienna, Hermeto Pascoal-Janete El Haouli and Jose Antonio Mannis-Regina Porto from Brazil) Alternativa received new momentum, since the new "Dom" perfectly suits the Festival's "Downtown" requirements. Leningrad/St Petersburg reacted by establishing its own "Sound ways" Festival.

A daring theatre entrepreneur Vadim Dubrovitsky even tried to implant the idea of new music to New Russians millionaires. The idea succesfully worked for three consecutive years "The Festival of Festivals" devoted to Part, Gubaidulina and Schnitke were rather popular among those who could afford $100 or more for a ticket, but in 1996 the Festival of Festivals went bankrupt.

The last and the youngest is the Moscow Forum, a bilateral meetings of musicians and musicilogists, in the Rachmaninov hall of Moscow Conservatory. Tarnopolski's New Music studio is the main and often the only Russian performing unit. Being a part of the educational process of "Moscow Forum" is respected by professionals but never comes out of Conservatory walls. There were two-three Russian-Dutch, two Russian-German and onr Russian-Austrian meeting). Since the Tchaikovsky Conservatory has earned its international reputation long before music avantgarde was born, there is no doubt the Moscow Forum will survive any crises.

Sporadic activities could be observed in other cities- Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg (the Good Festival Silent Movie/Loud Music modelled after the Knitting Factory in New York) and even Smolensk. But as Beatles used to sing "Tomorrow never Knows". The Russian "Tomorrow" knows much less than that of the Beatles. Of course, the style of music does not change automatically when political changes occur. Sociopolitical changes serve as a kind of catalyst or magnifying glass - for better or worse. They would blow up a certain trend or minimize it. Like Schnitke, not Gubaidulina, has become sort if vogue in the post-Soviet times. But his best friend Alemdar Karamanov who continiues to write symphonies (about 30 ) much more simple in style music (more: with some Russian Orthodox overtones which at a certain period, i.e. in time of "perestroika," were appreciated by both roots-oriented "nationalists" and Westernized Human-rights "progressivists") is still virtually unknown to general public.

Without perestroika, a Chinese emigree(his family moved to the USSR in the times of cultural revolution when he was 13) Tso Chen Guan would stay a typical "Soviet" neoclassicist with a slight touch of "orientalism", but now he almost equals his more famous compatriots Tan Dun and Bright Shen (his Autumn moon in a Khan Palace" is a kind of Chamder music hit). The " perestroika and glasnost" made possuble the foundation of Assosiation for Modern Music-2 within the official Union of Composers (ASM-2; ASM - was a grouping of the 1920s which included Roslavets, Mosolov, Shostakovich, Myaskovski. It was harshly dispelled by Stalinists in the beginning of the 1930s). Edisson Denisov was the driving force and the first president of ASM. After his untimely death in 1996 the composer/musicologist Viktor Yekimovski took his position. Style-wise ASM (it soon dropped the figure"2") represents the contemporary Western New music. It should be part of International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) as is Ukranian branch, if someone in new Russia agreed to pay the membership fee. Luckily enough, the new president a talented composer himself (in distinction from the founder Denisov) is open-minded and tolerant person and is nor beyond such trends as minimlaism or electronic experiments (as his "Up in the 'Hunting Dogs' constellaion" for three flutes and tape shows). Denissov was French-oriented avant-gardist for whom Pierre Boulez was the latest influence. He even managed to invite Boulez himself to teach at the Moscow Conservatory. But, save for Denissov himself, ASM continues as a German-oriented (Darmstadt and Donaueschingen) grouping. It is no coincidence that most of ASM members -both elders Schnitke, Gubaidulina, and the next generation (who is around 40 now) Alexander Raskatov, Ivan Sokolov are now German residents. As are not members - both the former half-dissident emigree Viktor Suslin and the official Union of Composers vice-president Rodion Shchedrin (the latter and, by the way, the most popular Russian jazz musician Leonid Chizhik now reside in Munich). Dmitri Smirnov always has been an avid William Blake fan, he had studied his poetry long before moving to Great Britain.

All of the ASM members (and half of the rest new music practioners) went through post-modernist polystylistic grotesques in the 1980s and turned to monostylistic mainly of nueoromanic orientation firmly rooted in Alban Berg's free treatment of 12-tone technique. Which I would rather call "neo-symbolism" since a great deal of their works (at least as a title shows) appeals to some metaphoric extra-musical sources - usually of literary origin. Here are the titles of the works from the Moscow Autumn-98 program: "A music lesson in a Byzantium school" for tenor-recorder (V.Yekimovski), "Hommage a Kandinski" for piano and chamber ensemble (Vladimir Tarnopolski), "Lilacs" - postlude after the eponiomous canvas of Vrubel for trio(Serguey Pavlenko), "Beyond the time limits- variations on a theme of Denisov" for chamber ensemble (Yuri Kasparov). The youngest generation offers "Herbstmuhl"(Autumn delusion") by Olga Rayeva (a commission be NEM -Canada), "Sacher Torte" by Elena Ganchikova, Honkuoku for shakuhachi and piano by Dmitri Kalinin, "Winter music" by Vadim Karasikov,"Worthless Trees" for bass and trombone by Serguey Belikov.

The middle generation of ASM (over thirty) even established a group "Cryptophonics" (Iraida Yusupova, Ivan Sokolov a. o.) who use symbolism in a way Charles Ives did in his "Concord" Sonata . Viktor Yekimovski was far ahead of his time when he composed "Double Variations" for a chamber ensemble - a tribute to two Antons - Chekhov and Webern. The composr follows not only overall structure but also slight changes of the Chekhov's short story "She is sleepy".

My personal choice of the ASM grouping includes "Litanie" by Alexander Raskatov, mono-opera by Yuri Kasparov 'The Raven"for bass solo, and Ensemble(1995), "Welt voll Irrsinn" to the poems of Kurt Schwitters commissioned be de Erepriis(Holland), "A la Gaugin" by Serguey Pavlenko (an expert in wind instruments, this work is written for "Messiaen-type of quartet - with clarinet). Of elder composers definitely under-exposed in the Soviet times composers and not formal members of ASM, but writing in the same "neosymbolism" style Alexander Knaifel of Saint Petersburg (he writes mainly for voice- from Monody to Big liturgical choral works such as "Chapter 8" for four choirs, cello and…"cathedral"), the daring of Mstislav Rostropovitch Vyacheslav Artyomov, the Russian Krzysztof penderecki whose monumental "Requiem"(1988) changed its subtitle according to political situation in the country or abroad (the last one read "to the innocent victims"

In spite of three minimalist Alternativa Festivals, Russia seems to pass this style. That is strange since one of the sources of minimalism -Middle-Asian instrumental forms like maqam is well known to Russian musicians. (It should be noted that Faraj Karaev, tha son of well-known Azerbaijan composer Kara Karaev who still is strongly attached to ASM is a typical Western composer and his attitude towards Oriental classics does not differ much from that of, say, Peter Michael Hammel; by the way Karaev jr "Sonata for two performers"- 1976 - is a true masterpiece).

Of ASM members, only Nikolai Korndorf used repetitive structures in his piano works to reconstruct the image of Ancient Pagan Russia instead of Lithuanian folk songs as Igor Stravinsky did in 1910s. Now remember the title of this writing. The time of composers is over. This is the title of a book by Vladimir Martynov, loosely connected with ASM. He is the minimalist, in the sense Arvo Part or Somei Satoh are. He uses repetitive structures, sometimes his material includes scarcely two-three notes (just two of them "d" and"g" for Dances of Kali-Yuga for piano solo. Forty munites of the reperirion of one interval in Anton batagov's execution were never boring).According to Martynov, the Western European tradition is completely exhausted. We can just contemplate and comment on it. His works are in his own words "bricolage", just the most beautiful fragments of classics are repeated over and over until the composer is sure that we share his admiration to a tradition. This seems to be a Russian paradox, but remember Igor Stravinsky's saying: "Harmony has had a brilliant but short history" and continuing to compose his serial works with this very harmony in mind ("I compose vertically" -as he commented his "Movements").

The other minimalist worth mentioning is Serguey Zagny -the rationaslist who constructs both his orchestral and electroacoustic pieces the way Iannis Xenakis does. But the result reminds more sparse Morton Feldman.

Of course, the more or less neoclassical maintream does exist in contempoary Russia, showing no hints of fatigue in the works of Andrei Espai, Ale[andetr Nikolayev, Kirill Volkov and many others. Some of them are more "roots" oriented, some of them use international language, just a few of them are equal in both,like the aformentioned Andrei Eshpai or Andrei Petrov in St. Petersburg or younger Andrei Golovin, Leonid Bobylev or Iraklii Gabeli. After some Webern-styled pieces Roman ledened turned to diatonic "new simplicity" as did aforementioned Alemdar Karamanov and the late Nikolai Karetnikov. After 1991 they were not obliged to hide their Russian Orthodox belief as Georgi Csiridov had.

Some of the composers like Alexander Vustin and Yuri Butsko fit both 'nationalist" idologies and new music trend with their Ancient Russian modalisms. There is also a chosen few who balance on the verge of avant-garde like the veteran Serguey Slonimski in St Petersburg, Yuri Yukechev in Novosibirsk (he is also one half of a free jazz duo "Homo Liber") and Vladimir Kobekin (in Ekaterinburg), Vladimir Nikolayev of Moscow(also an expert in electroacoustics which is rare for academically inclined musicians).

There are also "outlaws" who are beyond categories, the most famous name would, of course, be that of Galina Ustvolskaya (who had managed to study with Shostakovich before he was fired after Zhdanod's critique in 1948-49) or Yuri Khanin - a true dadaist in the vein of Eric Satie(but musically he is nearer to Scriabin expressionism). Both are from St Petersburg. Moscow has Leonid Hoffman -a strict follower of 12-tone Schoenbergian school.

But due to the reasons mention at the beginning (bad communication, the lack of systematical information, absence of distribution for professional music press) one does not hope that there could be a lot of 'lone wolves" like, say, Conlon Nancarrow or Ivor Darreg in the USA.

Anyway, the rest does compose against all odds, even when the time of composers is (presumabely) over.