He has everything in his life: a family, a work he is passionate about and public recognition. What some people attribute to luck, Sergei Proskurin calls labour. The founder of Russian Chamber Orchestra, the conductor and the professor, he knows like no one else that once one embarked on music career, he or she can't give it up.
Walking in Forest
It is Sunday. How he has anticipated this day! It must have been an old habit from his student years when everyday 6-hour rehearsals in Saratov Music Conservatory didn’t seem enough. There was no better thrill for him than playing the trumpet all day long alone. And today, as in the past, he opens his old well-worn case...
The music lives here, the musician lives here. It is slightly messy at Sergei's home, just like at the artist's: instruments, sheet music and vinyl records that he's collected since childhood. A tube radio-gramophone, Record 314, just like his parents used to have, occupies the most important place. Pictures of his children hang on the walls instead of medals, awards and diplomas that he has more than enough. His children are here except for Dima who works in Stockholm. Daniil and Arina flip through pages of exercise books – it is a school day tomorrow, whereas 8-year-old Philip asks his father for a walk. Well, let's go!
They love to go out of the town to a pine forest. They take a camera just in case a nice animal shot turns up – Proskurin knows a thing or two about this. Philip climbs logs and Dad is here to support. For some people Proskurin is a mentor, a teacher and a conductor of international fame, but for him he is just Daddy. And it doesn't bother him that when his father comes to Hong Cong he has a friendly chat with Jackie Chan and when he is in Sweden he talks to Benny Andersson from ABBA, that his father's skill greatly impressed Margrethe II, the Queen of Denmark and Karl XVI, the King of Sweden... Philip continues to climb and he is not afraid to fall because he feels the father's hand nearby.
They go out and play music together and their whole crowd attends a gym where they learn martial arts. Sergei has a close-knit and, what he cherishes much, large family because he never had brothers and sisters...
First Chords
Stary Oskol, 1960. Sergei was three. His father decided that such a solid boy should have stopped playing rattles and gave him a balalaika to learn. Georgy didn't have any musical background – he was an electrician at a factory, but was the best at playing the button or key accordion. Mother Polina was an early childhood teacher and she also knew what's what in music. "Once three of us tried to play something: parents played the guitar and the domra, while I strummed the balalaika," recollects Sergei. "That was a fantastic experience! Probably, I fell in love with music that very moment."
However, it did not mean he loved practising. On the contrary, he was attracted by the street, wanted to play football, whatever, but not the notation. The day came when the light grew darker for the 6-year-old kid – the parents sent him to a music school. However, soon enough he began to enjoy the life and later joined a music college on his own will. He made friends with people who found it pleasurable to discuss the matters of art. While having thoughtful, deep conversations, they somewhat naturally organized a boy's band. When he was almost 14 he already played the keyboard and the guitar. Though mainly the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were covered at proms, graduation parties and dance floors where they were playing, he never abandoned the classic music. He always considered it as something eternal at the same time favourably looking at other genres, including the modern ones. "What matters is how the music is played, not the music itself," Proskurin explains. "It's like with nationalities – there are no bad or good one, but there bad or good people."
Behind the Iron Curtain
Sergei Proskurin was 20-something when he won a competition and set off for his first tour to nowhere less than Japan. It was the year of 1978, the so-called "Brezhnev's stagnation" with its long queue in shops. But the fifth-year student of Saratov Music Conservatory stayed in Ginza Hotel in Tokyo, visited the parks of Ancient Kyoto and played 35 gigs! The young trumpet-player crossed the country from the South to the North and had some exposure to the unusual culture about which the Soviet citizens knew only from country-famous story Sakura Branch by Vsevolod Ovchinnikov published in Roman-Gazeta magazine.
He came back a different person. And he continued to expand horizons travelling abroad, to the other side of the "iron curtain". He was invited to give concerts in Germany and in France. Then everything became quiet. During the two-year obligatory army service he played in a military orchestra. After the demobilization Proskurin founded Department of Pop-Jazz music and started a brass-quintet, the first one in Moldova SSR. While being the first trumpeter of the National Symphony Opera Orchestra, he also tried to conduct in Chekhov Theatre. When Perestroika came, he left for Europe for long 20 years.
Coming Back to Russia
He worked as a teacher, headed the department of the wind instruments in Sweden State Conservatory and conducted trumpet classes in the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen; he underwent trainings delivered by the best conducting and trumpet professors in London and New-York; visited many countries with gigs. But at a certain moment of time he decided to leave everything and come back home to Russia.
He wanted to be closer to his elderly parents. They died one after another over a year due to diseases. Sergei did not want to go abroad anymore because he understood that he was needed in Russia. He learnt the basics of music here, away from big cities, not in Europe or America... It was his call now to share knowledge with the young. He sent a letter to Sweden stating that he wouldn't come back. Nobody believed, they tried to talk him out of this decision. He was welcome to return. Even years after, the merits of the maitre were not forgotten abroad: he would be invited to deliver lectures and master-classes. However, the new Russian period of his work aggravated by the pain of the recent loss became, perhaps, the most difficult one in his life – Sergei had to start from scratch.
In Kursk, he found like-minded, talented musicians who were able and wanted to accomplish something worthwhile together. In 2001, the Russian Chamber Orchestra was organized. The orchestra was hosted in Kursk University and headed by Proskurin, of course.
12 years in Kursk is quite a time, especially in view of the fact that previously he lived in ten different places over the same period of time. But he doesn't plan to move anywhere now. And it is already difficult to imagine the city without Sergei Proskurin and his orchestra. The 4th of October is a red-letter day for many Kursk residents because a new concert season starts on this day.
Even when something goes wrong, the musician thinks positive. "Each single day is like a holiday for me," Sergei goes. "We set new targets, we think up something and we find joy in successes of our students. When it becomes boring, it means it's time to record a new disc. If it gives no more thrill, let's write books, organize a festival or let's go on tour to Moscow, after all! There's always something ahead, what pushes us forward."
A musician Sergei Proskurin with a filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union Nikita Mikhalkov
photos from archive of Sergei Proskurin
