This old lady on the pavement is begging for money. If you listen closely you may hear her singing, and this is a song many of those passing by have never heard before. She begs at one of the busiest tourist spots in Sergiyev Posad known as Blinnaya Gora which could be roughly translated as Pancake Mount.

Recorded February 6th, 2011 (Edirol R-09HR, built-in mics)
Published December 20th, 2011.

Imagine walking through a forest and hearing something like this…

A monster beast? An evil spirit woken too early? Not really.

Even though I knew where I was going I didn’t realize it at first. What I’ve heard was some heavy metal band playing at the open-air gig near the town of Peresvet this summer. Hear the birds and the wind in the trees at the end of this edited recording. I bet they thought they were invaded! Good news for them, it lasted only for a few hours – just like the Halloween night.

Recorded July 2nd, 2011 (MS-TFB-2)
Published October 31st, 2011.

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.

There is a word most of us only use once a year and the word is majorettes.

They are the drummer girls performing live at some sort of event. In Sergiyev Posad majorettes are normally seen during the annual town celebration opening ceremony when they march down the main street. That’s when I recall the word. The show is somewhat cheesy – red military type uniforms, strange hats decorated with feathers, white mini-skirts and drumming all over punctuated with a distinctive dry drum stick crossing sound.

I’ve made this recording the other day running against the rehearsals by the drummers headquarters, located at the 88th college (no commemorative names here, think of NY avenues instead). My majorette word limit is over now!

Recorded June 1st, 2011 (MS-TFB-2)
Published June 11th, 2011.

Quirky yet bold – meet the Sergiyev Posad municipal orchestra, the biggest one in the town whose repertoire incorporates everything from Russian torch songs and pre-WWII jazz to the USSR’s Cold War era hits.

I went to the performance last Wednesday just to found out later that squeezing the half an hour show into a five-minute blog slot isn’t that easy. Three to five minutes are ok if you want to tell a story in sound exclusively without being boring. So here’s my try. First, an opener – a piece written by Sammy Nestico, followed by Friedrich Gulda’s Concerto for cello and wind ensemble with Pyotr Kondrashin on cello, then a buffoonery act by Illya Ushully, and finally – Maksim Fyodorov making button accordion sound really different. Apart from that – lots of music orchestrated by the conductor Vladislad Kadersky.

Recorded May 11th, 2011 (CA-14 omni)
Published May 14th, 2011.

For some reason, I like amateur brass bands so much. The performance may be far from perfect, the sound is not that polished and the repertoire may lack those virtuoso pieces but one thing is for sure, they do play an important role in bringing community spirit even to the most deprived areas. This is the local brass band playing at the opening of the annual town celebration in Krasnozavodsk, a small town not far from Sergiyev Posad. It wasn’t their best day of course but anyway…

Recorded October 2nd, 2010 (CA-14 omni)
Published March 26th, 2011.