Published on: 2026-04-02
Source: Melody – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
At the end of last year, “Melodiya Company” released a newThe sixth album by the Moscow jazz project LRK Trio, created by keyboardist Evgeny Lebedev (EL), bassist Anton Revnyuk, and drummer Ignat Kravtsov in collaboration with the Euphoria Orchestra under the direction of Elizaveta Korneeva, bringing together young performers of academic music.
Recorded in just two days at the legendary Moscow studio GDRZ on Malaya Nikitskaya, the album LRK Orchestra is an experiment impressive in its scale, combining the worlds of jazz, academic, and folk music. To this day, the trio Lebedev — Revnyuk — Kravtsov is undeniably among the flagships of domestic jazz, and this new recording is a big event not only in their own creative path but also for the entire Russian scene. When we say “jazz” here, we mean modern jazz in all its eclecticism and openness, and LRK is exactly those who lead this music beyond familiar territories.
In an interview to Ilya Rasskazov (IA), Evgeny Lebedev spoke about how the joint work of three jazz improvisers with a symphony orchestra took place, what kind of music entered this recording, and how one should approach creativity and art in general.
Can LRK Orchestra be called your most ambitious project to date?
If I even said not ambitious, but amazing. Everything connected with this album can only be called a miracle. The idea was born long ago, and you know how it is, usually such ideas are nurtured and often postponed “for later.” But one morning I woke up with a clear thought that it’s time. And I started doing it without any expectations of orchestration. The work went quite fast, and in a little over a month everything was done. Then Anton Revnyuk did the orchestration for his new composition “Silhouette of Memories,” and we went to the studio to record a trio, bearing in mind that the orchestra is playing with us.Everything was done in two days and simply, as they say, “launched the idea into space” — about the fact that we needed to find an orchestra. Surprisingly, but somewhere after six months we were already recording at the famous GDRZ studio with the Euphoria orchestra, led by Elizaveta Korneeva.
How it happened — it is a long story. About the circumstances of the album recording, director Anna Paletskaya made a documentary film, where we reveal in more detail how everything happened. It can be watched on social networks or on the websiteelebedev.com.
And how do you feel about the fact that this work was released on “Melodiya”? Does this fact make the album special? And is a vinyl release expected?
Of course, the Melodiya company has been associated with delight and fairy tales for me since childhood. For us, this is honorable and even somewhat nostalgic. However, the realities of the modern music industry have changed significantly, and now it is possible to release albums and be a successful artist even without a label, especially since labels do not invest much financially in artists. A rare releasing label fully covers the costs of recording and issuing CDs or vinyl records. We are grateful to Melodiya for their interest in our creativity; this is very significant, and we hope that an album will come out there.
You belong to a generation that experienced music on vinyl records back in childhood. Which one is your favorite?
Of course, we all experienced this wonderful time. I personally grew up on audio stories and musical performances. “The Bremen Town Musicians,” for example, I listened to countless times until the record started to skip. This recording is, arguably, number one for me.
And how did you select the music for LRK Orchestra? It includes both your well-known and programmatic compositions, as well as new material.
If I had new works that I initially heard precisely in orchestral sound, such as “Spring Riot,” Mr. L.M., and “Lullaby,” there was also an instrumental version by Anton of his composition “Silhouette of Memories.” Then we decided to choose our pieces, already time-tested, and expand the sound and form with an orchestra. That’s how the album came about.
And for you, this is far from your first experience collaborating with orchestras, and the recent concert album with the Opensound Orchestra received excellent reviews from both your fans and critics. How exactly did your collaboration with the Euphoria Orchestra develop?
These albums are completely different. If the album with the string orchestra Opensound is a live experience recorded at a concert in the Cosmos pavilion at VDNH, then the album with the Euphoria orchestra is a studio album, and the orchestra itself is many times larger in size. It is already a full-fledged symphony ensemble, which imposes certain complexities. As Ignat once said: “It’s like sitting behind the wheel of a BELAZ after a passenger car.” Moreover, our music is often unusual for academic musicians: it is full of complex sizes and rhythms, and contains a lot of improvisation.As some conductors admitted to me, for classical musicians it is very unusual when the score says that a trio is improvising, but there are some notes written, and when and where to enter is unclear. Jazz musicians are used to relying on internal rhythm, musical instincts and ear, so for us it is not so critical what is in the notes, for us the score is an invitation to think, albeit within the form. Here, probably, was the main difficulty of working with the orchestra. But conductor Liza Korneeva quickly recognized what was what, and on our recording everything worked out.
The first track on the album is dedicated to Lyle Mays. And whose music else inspired you during the recording process?
Russian classics. This is honestly all of us. I am very inspired by the works of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Scriabin. It is important for me to continue Russian traditions, to develop Russian melodism. It is especially valuable when it is possible to organically combine jazz rhythms and harmony with Russian color. Therefore, for me, our brilliant predecessors are the best teachers. And their music, I probably listen to more often than any other.
Ilya also recorded a version of Eduard Artemyev’s composition “Worshipers” from the film “The Edge of Love.” It can be assumed that this track could have become the main highlight of the album. So why didn’t the composition end up on the record after all?
The idea to play this piece as a trio came to Anton Revnyuk when we were sitting in the dressing room of the Bolshoi Theatre before going on stage. I just started improvising the theme, slightly changing the rhythmic pulse, the thing sounded differently, which allowed us to play it in “our” style. We began including this piece in concerts and liked it so much that I decided to make an orchestration. Anton personally knew Eduard Artemyev, called him, and asked for permission to perform and record this piece. Eduard Nikolaevich said then: “Play whatever you want from mine, please.”Of course, we did not obtain any written permission at that time, and a few months later Eduard Nikolaevich passed away. When we were already recording the orchestral arrangement, his son opposed the inclusion of the composition in the album, but he shared plans to release an anthology of Artemyev’s music — and our version may end up there. Out of great respect and love for the music of the great Russian composer, we agreed and transferred the rights for this recording to Artemy Eduardovich Artemyev.
Cinematic quality has always been one of the distinctive features of your sound. LRK Orchestra sometimes even sounds like an ideal film soundtrack. Did you consciously keep some film plots in mind when creating, for example, “The Broken Tango” or “Lullaby”?
If our opinions always agreed on this: music for us is unthinkable without imagery and emotionally felt content. Each composition has its own story. So, “Silhouette of Memories” by Anton was written under the impression of fragments of a vivid dream that is impossible to recall entirely — only a vague outline remains. “Luminescence” by Ignat Kravtsov is also built on a powerful metaphor — the inner glow of a person, their soul. And the “Lullaby” turned out to be quite a funny story.I wrote it many years ago, when my elder son Misha was having his teeth cut, but the attempt to soothe the child had the opposite effect: he cried even harder. Since then I have not performed it, and now the play has come to life again, sounding in the orchestra.
Did LRK Orchestra make it with the expectation of a new auditorium, or is this a logical continuation of your story that still deserves to be studied from the very beginning?
To be honest, I don’t believe that something in art can be done with cold calculation. Of course, when creating a work, you always hope for something, but that does not guarantee success at all. Perhaps the perfect match of intention and result is possible only in pop music, and even there it is rather an element of a miracle. I can’t speak for everyone, but in this album there was no calculation whatsoever — only a call of the soul and a desire to develop, to create. And if thanks to it our audience expands, we will be only glad. So far, in the modern world, simplification, reduction, and so on contribute more to expanding the audience.By the way, we are not against this either, so we also experiment with pop artists, trying different formats and styles.
And what turned out to be the most difficult in working on the new recording, and what was the most pleasant?
The main challenge was related to the difference between world-class academic and jazz musicians. Fortunately, the Euphoria orchestra consists of first-class performers open to different genres, so all sharp edges were quickly smoothed. Another challenge was the tight recording deadlines, but even here a small miracle happened: we caught the final note of the album a minute before the end of the session. But the most amazing feeling is when you hear in the studio how the music is created before your eyes. The orchestra breathes as a single organism, bringing the musical notes to life. Our trio absorbs this energy and carefully carries it forward.For me, creating music has always been true magic, and the studio process confirms this every time.
Your work is well known in the West. You have toured extensively and been published abroad. How has the situation changed in recent years?
The geography of our tours across Russia has significantly expanded, but Japan still remembers us — we have performed there four times already. There were also solo trips to Hong Kong, but now our main focus, of course, is concentrated on concerts within the country.
The Soviet and Russian jazz school has rich traditions of studying domestic folk music. In your music, including on the new album, folk motifs are also richly represented. Is the appeal to folk music a global trend today?
For me, it is not a trend, but love. I grew up on folk music, studied in the folk department at a music school, and later became interested in jazz. But as they say, there are no former folk musicians. There was a time when I was called a “folk musician” in the jazz community. And I am very happy about this. Folk music was, is, and will be the foundation for me, my roots, so folk intonations themselves shine through me and cannot be hidden.
Is RJDaz back in fashion now? How do you see the situation with the new post-jazz and near-jazz music in Russia today?
If the most important thing is that in Russia one can see an audience of all ages at a jazz concert. Many visiting American jazz musicians have repeatedly sought this fact. In America and Europe, jazz is predominantly attended by pensioners. In Moscow, there are enough jazz clubs, jazz sounds in the philharmonic. I cannot say whether jazz is fashionable now or not, but that it largely depends on the jazz artists whether it will be in fashion, that is certain. In principle, we as a trio do not particularly strive to be within only jazz, therefore sometimes we are criticized for playing not jazz.Those who must be the guardians of jazz traditions are those who in their playing pay attention to the purity of style, but that is definitely not us.
Returning to the new album, where would you like this music to sound — in the concert hall of the philharmonic, on the stage of a jazz club, on the soundtrack of a film, or, say, in the elevator of a five-star hotel?
If our music sounded in the theater, at a concert abroad performed by Japanese big bands, sounded even in a massage salon, was used in cinema, once I even heard our piece “Nonsense” in a restroom. Our music can sound anywhere, but if it is associated with kindness and creation, we will only be glad.
Ilya Rasskazov, Musical Life, 05.03.2026
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