Salsa! The Grand Finale of Musical Bridges’ 14th Season was a fascinating weekend with Gibaro de Puerto Rico. Beside many beautiful performances they introduced me to the way they relate to the world. Puerto Ricans are very warm people. If they know you for a few hours and they like you, you instantly become Mi Amor! They love you, they hug you, they laugh all the time, whether they have a reason to or not. Their sunny culture is infectious and all-inclusive. Their music to a great extent represents their live-loving sunny island personalities. My husband Robert is of Norwegian descent, sixth-generation, but still proud to be. When we got...

I like to grow a garden, both figuratively and literally speaking. My earliest childhood memories are those of the light in the garden lying under the apple tree on a sunny day, light winks at me through tender spring leaves taking on a life of it’s own. My grandmother had a green thumb; her spectacular tulips growing on both sides of a narrow walkway to our small summer cottage, an hour away from Moscow, were envy of our neighbors. It was my chore to help collect black currant so my mother and grandmother used whatever did not make it to my tummy to make sweet preserves for winter. I think I was five at a time. Some years later when my...

“We are approaching San Antonio; it is beautiful evening, clear sky northeast wind twelve miles per hour, eighty degrees… thank you for choosing Southwest airlines, have a pleasant evening”… It all started with me putting myself out for sale on the Musical Bridges auction last spring… guess what? Drs. Michelle and Eric Miller bought me for a solo recital for their Wedding Anniversary Celebration that will take place this weekend. I have not played solo since my postgraduate recital in Moscow in 2000. I got extremely exited to get back to solo piano and picked a very romantic program for the occasion. I started practicing Chopin, Liszt,...

“Anya, we are starting a REAL art lovers book club. We will go deep into the artist’s psyche and study it inside out…you’ve got to join….” Okay, said I without thinking twice. This was my old friend Susan Dunis who shared with me the first years of Musical Bridges, an artist and fun person to be around, spontaneous and light. I did not look at my schedule, I am loyal to my friends, if they want to do something I support it without asking questions… The first artist selected was Edward Hopper. When the book arrived I got a queer feeling that maybe I should have checked my schedule before I agreed to join a club– it was 650 pages thick!...

When my son was getting ready to attend Law School, he needed to take the LSAT and he shared his exercise book on logic with me.  It went something like this: “An advertising executive must schedule an advertisement during a particular TV show.  Seven different consecutive time slots are available for advertisements during a commercial break, and are numbered one through seven in the order that they will be aired.  Seven different advertisements – B, C, D, F, H, J, and K – must be aired during the show.  Only one advertisement can occupy each time slot.  The assignment of the advertisements to the slots is subject to the following...

This is my latest… I am sitting in a café with a group of actors and a play director and discussing the character of my heroine that I will play in a few hours in front of a large audience.  I am asking the director, “What is your vision for this production?  What is this play about?  Is it about love and redemption?”  “ Yes, of course,” he is saying.  “What else can it be about ???”  Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that I do not know any lines for my role and I did not really read the play.  “I will be okay… I just should concentrate on my character and the lines will come to me.”  In a few minutes, I wake up gasping for air… I...

Last Sunday, Robert and I went to the McNay Art Museum to see the Andy Warhol exhibit.  The weather was beautiful and we were looking forward to being back at the McNay.  What a charming museum we have!  The grounds were well-groomed and modern sculptures completed the idyllic picture of a beautiful garden.  Did you know that every first Sunday of the month the permanent collection is free?  I was very happy to see quite a few young families with kids inside and outside the McNay on this first Sunday afternoon.  The Administration and the Board of Directors have done a tremendous job and the Museum projects an image of a great organization...

Imagine… You type San Antonio Symphony into a search window, and…WOW!  An international world of music opens in front of you!  Recordings on world famous labels!  A busy touring schedule under the button of the brilliant Sebastian Lang-Lessing!  Performances with premier soloists like Martha Argerich, Eugene Kissin, Lang Lang, Joshua Bell… all possible concert halls…Vienna Musikverein!  Covent Garden!  Concertgebouw! Carnegie Hall! The reviews rave about the orchestra and conductor and the city of San Antonio!  Ranked #1 of 317 attractions in the United States!  Type: Symphonies, Description: “Often a tough ticket, the San Antonio Symphony...

My 50th birthday present exceeded my wildest expectations…I got a Giraffe!!!  No, Robert didn’t give me a real one – but an abstract one instead.  He is tall and handsome and borne out of the tree root that was stuck in the way of the sewer line in the artist’s backyard.  When I look at him, my heart fills with joy.  Although his real name is “The Irreversible Dilemma of Lost Opportunities”, to me he is the most handsome Giraffe there is.  And this is the beauty of abstract art; it is what you want it to be at the same time with what it is. I am a big fan of the work of San Antonio sculptor DANVILLE CHADBOURNE.  I know exactly why I like...

“Marik… go practice your violin” ….engraved in my childhood memory. He was born on a calm, summer night with the sounds of Paganini concerto No. 1 on the radio.  His fate was decided – he will be a great violinist!  I was at summer camp and met this new addition to our family when he was already 3 weeks old.  I was twelve and did not know what to make of it at the time. Mark exceeded the expectations of our violinist parents.  He is more than a violinist; he is a visual artist, computer genius and a businessman – he is a Renaissance Man. Mark has a fascinating relationship with the violin – he studies the history of its making, he plays it...

Violin is probably the closest instrument to the human voice.  Violin vibrato makes our inner selves vibrate along with every thought of the musician.  Violin reaches the deepest corners of our beings and makes us cry, makes the hair on the back of our necks stand up and makes us shiver from pure physical pleasure.  The Old Italian violins are surrounded with the mystery of their making; every violin has a soul of its own and plays well only in the hands of a great master.  Sometimes the violin gets compared to a voluptuous woman caressed by a skillful lover. This January, Musical Bridges is participating in the citywide Beethoven festival...

Since I just turned 50, I decided that it is a good time to start my bucket list.  I’m looking at things realistically and ideas like becoming a tall blond, having a few more kids and getting a culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris do not seem to be relevant anymore so… out the window they go.  I have always dreamed of learning many languages, but my mind could only do so if my very survival depended on it.  I have studied Italian, French and Spanish, but unless I was parachuted into those countries and left there without English or Russian speakers, there is no hope. During an after-Christmas sale, Rob and I splurged on many great...

Anya, there is a wrong note on the left hand… play it again… It all started with the simple question to my husband – what shall I learn for a HAPPY NEW YEAR video?  It has to be something short, flashy and very, very happy.  “Bumblebee”, Robert said, without thinking twice. “What a fresh idea!” I thought, and engaged on a YouTube journey.  After listening to about 25 different Bumblebees, some in killer arrangements, I found one by Rachmaninov.  And it was love at first site. “Flight of the Bumblebee” is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in...

Every year before New Year’s Eve I like to reflect on my life. I decided to dedicate this blog to Musical Bridges Around the World. We will celebrate our 15th Anniversary in 2012. Vladimir Bochkarev, Anya’s former piano professor In 1998, I was working at UTSA as a staff accompanist not really liking the job and looking for something fun to do. I invited Vladimir, one of my former piano professors from Moscow, to visit San Antonio. In order to help pay his airfare I asked the Mexican Cultural Institute to organize a concert for him. To make a long story short, the concert did not happen and he needed help with the airfare, so my...