Congratulations on your anniversary! You’ve managed to create a readable, respected, totally unique magazine with an audience of devoted readers. It’s a great achievement. We wish a long life, full of creativity, to the Hero of the Day.

 

     T., California

 

 

 

20 years — it really is a solemn moment. We, your readers, are the ones who ought to thank you for the cause to celebrate at the arrival of each issue of this magazine, beyond comparison with any other. I can’t imagine a time without it in my hands, without it bringing me new discoveries. Thank you for these 20 years.

 

     Ira, Sacramento

 

 

Wishin’ you rain for your Blues.

 

     Bill

 

Apraksin Blues is indubitably an original and strong artistic and human endeavor. The music of thought and form permeates each page. May it live on — as it has been, and as it may become. Wishing you success!

 

     Alla Hodos, California

 

 

Vive le Blues!

 

Michael Buckley, NY, NY

 

 

Congratulations on the anniversary of AB, dear to my heart! It’s a huge event, in my opinion! Truly an historical date.

 

Congratulations also on the aroma of a new era of Blues, the age of adulthood, maturity, the age of a higher level of its development. I wish your intuition maximum realization and materialization in all things!

 

     A., Russia

 

 

such a beautiful message and sense of the time / space dimension of Blues and blue and blueness — the expansiveness of 20 years anniversary and birthday — we celebrate you and with you.

 

     meredith and thom

 

 

Congratulations and best wishes for the prosperity of your amazing and unique creation — now almost adult, but with as youthful a soul as ever. I very much liked what you wrote about the “music of Blues” — indeed, every issue develops the musical theme announced two decades ago — what might be called the “Symphony of High Culture” (or “Russian-American Suite,” if you will — Blues contains these two motifs, constantly intertwining). With each issue, the music is a bit different, but the most important thing is that it never ends.

 

     A., USA

 

 

Congratulations for your big anniversary! I had not realized Apraksin has such a long history.

 

     Elizabeth

 

 

Your Blues hits a High Note!

 

My sincere wishes for you to continue on as a vessel of Spirit and high Petersburg traditions, bringing these values to the New World!

 

     Nadezhda Ovsyannikova, Washington

 

 

Congratulations to those who brought this amazing publication to life and continue nurturing it. Its development is impressive, but even more so is its adherence to its principals. Best wishes for even greater satisfactions for all who experience Apraksin Blues now and in the future.

 

     From fans on the northwest corner of the continental United States

 

 

We join our voices to the chorus of congratulations on the 20th anniversary of Blues; from where we are in Florida, the phenomenon of your bilingual and intercultural exploration and artistic interpretation of contemporary experience looks especially unique.

 

     We continue to admire your tireless search, its uncontrollable and unpredictable trajectory. We are glad that the first twenty years find you wholly ready for and open to the immense and still-rising tide of the new, which goes by the name of the 21st Century.

 

     Mila and Kostya Vodopyanov, Florida

 

 

Blues is completely unique against the background of everything published today. It’s terribly interesting, although, when reading it, I sometimes catch myself thinking that I don’t have the education to comprehend some of the articles. But that in itself is great!

 

     Basically — “don’t drop your palms from the brow of your thought.”* Please!

 

     S., California

 

 

* Translator’s note: Bulat Okudzhava, “Little Song about Mozart.”

 

 

Russian translations by James Manteith.