Breakdance or b-boy battle between the two rivals from the neighbouring towns of Alexandrov and Sergiyev Posad with the name of the latter town called out by the supporters. Recorded at the Posadsky Arbat open air festival, Blinnaya Mount, Sergiyev Posad. It funny to hear the downbeat confronting upbeat in the clapping. Photo: Oksana Maltseva.

Recorded July 2nd, 2011 (MS-TFB-2)
Published February 2nd, 2012.

As a shop-assistant in the mid-1940s, she was taught how to cheat on customers but she refused to do so quitting her then sought-after job in favour of a rather dull life as a factory worker. A short story told by a stranger on Epiphany night in Sergiyev Posad back in 2010 (in Russian)

Recorded January 18th, 2010 (MS-TFB-2)
Published January 21st, 2012.

Please note the following material is not for the faint-hearted, listen at your own risk

I’ve always had a suspicion that a good Japanese word karaoke is somehow related to a good Russian word kara which means punishment. Just listen to some karaoke singers around and you will get the point. But these particular singers cannot be classified or ranked, they are just Sergiyev Posad karaokers recorded this July.

These are the final lines of a song heard all across the Mitkina street in central Sergiyev Posad one day and despite the fact I’ve pressed the rec button too late it was a truly rewarding moment anyway.

The following two pieces were recorded at the Sergiyev Posad’s Kozikha area Community day. In the summer evening dusk, at a local park a group of women are performing the eighties hit called Klyon (The Maple Tree).

This is followed by a bunch of young men with their own rendition of a tune from The Troubadours Of Bremen, a famous USSR cartoon.

Recorded July 2&16, 2011 (MS-TFB-2)
Published October 2nd, 2011.

Once a year, an old, now defunct church at the village of Gagino finds itself at the centre of a singing festival commemorating the wedding that took place more than a century ago.

It were the Russian opera singer Feodor Chaliapin and his Italian fiancee, a ballet dancer named Iola Tornaghi who tied the knot in 1896. Backed by the story a group of locals supported by the media and Chaliapin Fund have started the church restoration campaign supported by the singing event.

This is the story told by one of the visitors to the show, a retired military officer – first, we hear him at the Sergiyev Posad station speaking of his friend belonging to an initiative group. Then we hear the friend’s singing, as well as the voices of the visitors including the TASS news agency journalist Nikolai Gorbunov who spent 25 years researching Chaliapin’s heritage in Scandinavia.

Recorded August 6th, 2011 (MS-TFB-2)
Published August 9th, 2011.

July 18 is World Listening Day, and this is the right time to make your hearing a bit more sharper again.

Last year I went looking for the most quiet spots in Sergiyev Posad, with the recorder of course. Not much happened this year except for one thing as it occured to me that July 18 is the day of double celebration in Sergiyev Posad. This is when the relics of St. Sergius were discovered.

St. Sergius was the 14th century monk who has founded the Trinity Sergius monastery. The monastery surroundings grew fast turning into a town which is now known as Sergiyev Posad. On this day thousands of pilgrims make effort to visit the town, and when they are in the monastery they queue to pay a tribute to the relics resting in of the temples.

The waiting could be really long, it may take hours and hours before they enter for a brief moment of pray. This is a recording of a group of worshippers waiting for their turn in the long queue under the sun – one is reading, all five are singing, and then the chimes up there declare one more hour of waitng.

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Then I came back. There’s a derelict shop in the Rabotchka area adjacent to the place where I work. It still sports a pale green outdoor sign which reads Fruits and Vegetables but its days are numbered. The large supermarket chain has laid its hand on it, so taking a photograph of this sign as well as the lozenge-shaped shop number plate seems to be a good idea. Someone (I don’t see who) is breaking the old glazing tile off the wall.

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Finally, a football match. I’ve heard this drum for quite some time now, its sound is strong enough for travelling half a mile or even more. Here it is – the drum and the Sergiyev Posad’s Loutch football fans shouting out a sequence of chants supporting the team. The voice that suddenly emerges in your ear belongs to the team coach Vyacheslav Antonov. ‘School’, he says, ‘we need the football school to make it more organized’. This is what July 18 sounded like in Sergiyev Posad.

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Recorded July 18th, 2011 (MS-TFB-2)
Published July 24st, 2011.

Yesterday’s Museum night at the Abramtsevo museum estate. Unfortunatelly I made it to the show too late so missed a lot. Anyhow, here’s some music by a Khotkovo band called Light In the Hole (Khotkovo is not genre but a local town), a bird singing in tune (oh yes, crossfading applied but no cuts), a bit of a quiz, a museum lady persuading the younger fans to leave the stage area, blacksmiths and the general ambience of the night.

Recorded May 14th, 2011 (CA-14 omni)
Published May 15th, 2011.

International Dawn Chorus Day is celebrated today, on the 1st Sunday of May. This event was introduced in 1984 with the help of The Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country in the UK. Today, more and more people around the world are joining the company of ornithologists and sounds recordists going out for sound walks – some as early as at 4.30 am.

Russia isn’t on the list of the global events yet, with the closest being Poland. But these are my five kopecks, a three minutes recording of a stream running by the lake in the Ferma area of Sergiyev Posad surrounded by the birds’ voices.

A great array of 2011 dawn choruses recordings from the UK could be found at the Wildlife Sound Recording Society website, with some recording lasting over one hour!  Opera and Mozilla Firexox users – if you’re having problems with the plugin used on the website,  mozilla.com support forum has an answer.

Recorded April 22th, 2011 (SP-TFB-2)
Published May 1st, 2011.