December 14 | Saturday | 20:00: “Songs of Mountains and Cities” | Art-center “MITKI”
Marat Street, 36/38, apt. 120, code 4318B
1 – Host Mitya Shagin and James before the Mitki concert
2 – Audience at the Mitki concert
3 – During the Mitki concert
4 – During the Mitki concert
5 – After the Mitki concert
6 – James on Marat Street after the Mitki concert
7 – Tatyana Apraksina on Marat Street after the Mitki concert
Concert review by Frau Koroleva (Telegram: @fraukorolevaa):
We visited the Mitki on Saturday and met a poet, musician and translator from friendly America, James Manteith. (https://m.vk.com/wall-79098291_8913)
Near James’s house in California grow grapes, and sitting under grape leaves, he sings about what he skillfully fishes out of space.
The occasion for literary and musical reflection can be a meeting with a friend, a loved one’s new dress, neglected Chinese books or, say, Borodinsky bread (https://jamesmanteith.bandcamp.com/track/baker-an-order-for-borodinsky)! To be honest, I don’t eat Borodinsky bread very much, but Americans eat even less. Yet James liked this bread so much in Russia that now he orders it from Brooklyn and even dedicated a song to it. And the song turns out to be not just about bread and a touching attachment to strange Russian habits. If in the States the bread is puffy and “lightweight,” then Borodinsky embodies a stronghold, a robust, unbreakable core. The song even contains these lyrics:
Tell the miller,
Mill the kernels whole,
Heavy pillars
Will uplift our souls.
I especially liked the part about heavy pillars uplifting our souls.
December 18 | Wednesday | 19:00: “Under Grape Leaves” | Art-space mArs
Field of Mars 3
Tickets: https://litsa-event.timepad.ru/event/3159246/
#Mars_квартирник #Заповедник_андеграунда
From the mArs Art Space concert announcement:
James Manteith is a musician, writer and expert on Russian culture. He studied Russian at Middlebury College and St. Petersburg State University. For over 25 years, James has collaborated with the interdisciplinary magazine Apraksin Blues and its editor, the artist and writer Tatyana Apraksina, which has allowed him to delve deeper into the Leningrad underground.
James translates songs by Russian authors such as Mike Naumenko into English. He is also a translator of Tatyana Apraksina’s poetry and prose, composes music based on her poems, and dedicates songs to her and her work. A week ago, mArs hosted Apraksina’s exhibition “Preamble” (https://t.me/artspacemars/4670) and her performance of the poetry cycle “California Psalms” (https://t.me/artspacemars/4739), which Manteith has also translated into English.
In his songs, James combines the influence of such legends as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Beatles with the spirit of informal Leningrad. His work is a melodic, poetic immersion in images and moods associated with life in nature and with an understanding of urban realities.
We invite you to a creative evening filled with music, poetry and deep reflections on human connections.
Video from the concert: Encore performance of James’s translation of Mike Naumenko’s “Call Me Early in the Morning”
Songs and lyrics by James Manteith: https://jamesmanteith.bandcamp.com/
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