Yakiv Tsvietinskyi
Dnipro, Ukraine
about
Yakiv Tsvietinskyi Double Quartet is a collaboration between two traditional ensemble units: a jazz and a string quartet. Instead of giving one of the ensembles a secondary, accompanying role, their collab aims to synthesise both these genres’ worlds and to erase the boundaries between classical music and jazz. The concept of the quartet is not about adding modern rhythms to classical music; rather, it is about demonstrating the inseparability of musical genres and eras.
Yakiv Tsvietinskyi is a trumpet player, composer, and teacher at the Academy of Music in Dnipro. In addition to his Quartet and Double Quartet groups, he collaborates with many Ukrainian and foreign musicians. He was a Fulbright Fellow from 2016 to 2018 and a fellow of the Yamaha Gulf FZE 2015 programme. He received the DownBeat Student Music Award in 2017 and 2018.
International performances and experience:
• 2015 – Performance of ‘On Mass’ at the EFG London Jazz Festival, UK, London, Roundhouse
• 2017, 2018 – Concert with the WMU Jazz Orchestra at the Elmhurst Collegiate Jazz Festival in Elmhurst IL, USA
• 2017 – ‘Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead’ in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C., USA
• 2018 – ‘Classical Gospel Jazz’ event at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo MI, USA
• 2019 – Concert at Letnia Fiesta Jazzowa in Szczecin, Poland
• 2019 – Performance of ‘Quests’ during the fourth Ukrainian Week in Gdansk, Poland, with the Polish Baltic Philharmonic in cooperation with the Ukrainian Institute
International collaboration:
• 2018 – Danish Jazz Days in Dnipro
• 2018 – The Jazz Brigade & Sylwester Ostrowski at Jazz on the Dnipro festival
Band
Yakiv Tsvietinskyi – trumpet
Katrin Kolyada – violin
Anna Sobko – violin
Irina Lee – viola
Maryna Ustenko – cello
Oleksiy Bogolyubov – piano
Serhii Artemov – double bass
Dima Lytvynenko – drums
Video
Trumpeter Yakiv Tsvietinskyi has been so gracious in sending me his new album Minimalist. He himself writes that he finds great inspiration in classical composers such as Shostakovich and Debussy and then in European jazz, where the biggest heroes are Kenny Wheeler and Tomasz Stanko.
It’s not that hard to hear on the album, where the lyrically beautiful trumpet playing plays along with piano, bass and drums. There is both calm and temperament in the music. It is music where it is about moving forward in the beautiful and at times thoughtful way. The opening number Lake Forest Boulevard belongs to that category.
We find the temperament towards the end of the album with the song Open Form, where we are challenged with a skewed and technically strongly based game. Here the drummer should be praised. It’s messy, but he knows where things stand.