Uri Kassyanik

There are details about the life of this Russian avant garde maverick that are a bit hard to believe. A dozen or more completely improvised solo releases can theoretically be stacked up on a sale table, on the other hand, thus immediately establishing credibility. This would most certainly be the case were one to attend an international festival where Uri Kassyanik is performing. The Kassyanik discography began sometime in the '80s in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, with an album entitled Red Canaries, eventually released in the United States with much other avant garde Russian music in the early '90s. By this time the piles of his solo CDs began threatening to obscure Russian news kiosks. He had indeed created an epic experience for the listener, who can happily combine the heady experience of Kassyanik's spontaneous creations on a multitude of instruments with various liner note texts in which tales of his exploits unfold, rivaling Baron Munchhausen. An attempt was made on Kassyanik's life on September 21, 1992, on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street? So says writer Alexandre Skidan in one of several essays that accompany the brilliant Lead Mask of Genius disc. This assertion comes only a few lines after the writer claims Kassyanik ". . .does not leave Russia," a juxtaposition of time and space right out of the good Baron's adventures. Kassyanik is an incredible name dropper, claiming relationships with John Cage, Bob Dylan, Eno, the artist both known and unknown as Prince and cello genius Rostroprovich. Leading to Shostakovitch, who criticized himself for what he called 'mania grandioso'--a kind of artistic pomposity. The fact that one of Kassyanik's liner note scribes references this syndrome is helpful in explaining the immense scope of this artist's...