Play It One More Time...

Jazzmen have long been considered musicians playing to entertain people at restaurants, clubs, and other public places. Few of the Studio Restaurant’s visitors know that the man at the piano is Petro Pashkov, an excellent musician, composer, and teacher, or that his every concert is quite an event in the local jazz community. Moreover, he is one of the few who have been fortunate enough to appear on the same program with Frank Zappa.

Q: You have played at restaurants for quite some time. Is this work different now from what it was years back?

A: I have been in this business for fifteen years and, much as I’d like to, I can’t say that playing at restaurants is anything to write home about. Here one plays only for money, which is better than standing in a bazaar.

There were special occasions previously when the restaurant you played was visited by a reputed thief fresh out of prison, a man of old underworld morals. He would order a rich meal and music, of course, and the first thing he would want to hear would be the romance “A Letter to My Mother” based on Sergei Yesenin’s verse. The new criminal lords are quite different. They are rude and demanding, they may kick the drums and otherwise keep the orchestra’s nerves on edge. Big parties used to be held at a restaurant near the Institute of Physical Culture. Its graduates who did not take up athletic careers automatically became part of the underworld or its environs. I saw them there: the shoot-outs, gas containers, and switchblades on the table beside plates and glasses, and of course fights. Now the atmosphere has become quieter as the underworld has put on more respectability, but I don’t know much about modern practices as the restaurant I work for was conceived as a jazz retreat.

Q: What is a standard show like at your restaurant?

A: Generally, the musicians try to play something they like —jazz, rock or just good instrumental music — in the first part. I remember the three of us were doing Chick Corea’s “Spain” when a waiter, or was it the maitre D, anyway it was still under the Soviets — walked over and said, “OK, guys, enough fooling around, start playing something.” We decided to try a trick on the ignoramus and play “The Kyiv Waltz” with each of the three instruments in an altogether different key. In other words, it was just cacophony. Actually, I was against it, afraid they would just throw us out. And you know what happened? Nothing! I mean people kept sitting, eating, drinking, chatting, several couples even went out to dance. That was a revelation! Most people visiting restaurants did not give a damn about music and the sounds were to them about the same as creaking chairs or cars driving past.

Getting back to our show, the second part is mostly music ordered by customers and there are times you have to play the same tune several dozen times during the evening.

Q: What about the current clientele?

A: It’s pretty motley, mostly foreigners, and from what I have been able to observe they care as little about music as the locals. Maybe even less. The problem is, however, that the maitre D can come over and tell you to play louder or quieter. Now a real musician must not be told such things, for when he performs he is in his own element and knows all this intuitively.

Yet I am grateful to those who gave me this job, because quite frankly this money constitutes the lion’s share of my family budget. Personally, I regard this as humanitarian aid, although what I earn is peanuts compared to what a mediocre musician makes anywhere in the West.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am quite all right, all things considered, except that I lack stability. I have no special reason to long for the Soviet past, but I often find myself thinking that I would like to go back in time. The Communists showed concern for a man in the street, even though hypocritically, for propaganda reasons. Yes, they did all kinds of horrible things, and Brezhnev deserves every joke they tell about him, but the fact remains that I got my apartment from the state fifteen years ago.

Now everything is topsy-turvy. Once I played a concert with Steve Uben, a visiting saxophonist from Belgium. Afterward we talked about our profession. In the civilized European countries the hierarchy in the musical domain is this: the teacher or professor comes first, meaning a stable and high pay, then good performers (I don’t mean stars), and restaurant musicians are placed at the bottom of the list.

Of course, if I had a good concert or teaching contract I would never play at a restaurant, because the job exhausts one morally in the first place. One feels this afterward, when playing a real concert. At the restaurant I can play, as we say, using one finger, but when it comes to a concert I feel that the energy I need was spent at the restaurant and I cannot give the audience gathered specially to listen to me what it really deserves. This is very frustrating.

Q: Some say that a musician playing at a restaurant eventually degrades. What do you think?

A: That’s right. To resist this degradation one must lead a very active creative life which is easier said than done. A good improvisation rendition is attractive because you make creative discoveries even as you play. Now what discoveries can one make repeating the same number over and over again? It’s almost like developing a reflex.

Q: How does a restaurant musician differ from a good musician?

A: The former is an ordinary craftsman, working on clients’ orders. A good restaurant musician must develop a large repertoire, covering almost the entire twentieth century, hits from all countries. Then there is such a thing as stage presence or personal charm. One must work hard to attract not the audience but separate customers willing to pay for their individual orders. In this sense I think that the musician’s professional skill comes last. I mean that one has to show enough skill to please individual ears.

Strange as it may seem, a number of established stage or studio musicians would prove helpless trying to please a restaurant audience, primitive as it looks. Here every musician must show utmost flexibility and have a lot of practice. Take that Yesenin’s “Letter.” It is a charming romance and performing it takes talent, especially when accompanying a singer, it must be done so people have tears in their eyes.

Q: Do you have butterflies before the show starts?

A: Yes, maybe. I feel a little excited, and I think it is quite normal in any professional performer. Especially if I know that there will be professionals in the audience. In such case I start working up adrenaline a day in advance. And then, playing and watching those professionals select tables close to the bandstand, listen and clap their hands, gives me almost as much pleasure as in concert. On such occasions even money seems of minor importance. But of course, a real concert is something very different. It is total immersion. I play and forget all about the surrounding world, all sense of time and space is lost. Perhaps I live for just that feeling.