The Magical Music of Marina Stolyar
I was first introduced to Marina's music after purchasing her ballet music CDs on line to use in my own teaching. As I listened through each piece, planning my class, I immediately felt the passion, dedication, and emotion in her work. Her interpretations are rich, vibrant, and exciting. The music is moving, and filled with energy. That afternoon in class, while teaching, I noticed an immediate change in my students. It's as if Marina's artistic essence and background as a Russian classical pianist came through the music, through my teaching, into the girls in the class. They began working more as a group... their port de bras and use of the head automatically became cleaner and more pronounced. I was intrigued at the rapid improvement and transformation, and intuitively felt it was due to Marina's music and exposing my students to it. At that moment I decided to only use Russian music or CD's for my ballet classes. It made that much of a difference. I now feel that the Vaganova spirit lays in the music as well as in the teachers, coaches and the very syllabus itself.
Describing her beginning years Marina recalls, "When I was three, I tried to imitate every rhythm that I heard. Once I became tall enough to reach the keys of the piano at my grandparents house, I tried to repeat my favorite songs that my grandmother sang to me. My mother's cousin, who lived in Leningrad, (now Saint Petersburg,) was a violinist with the famous Leningrad Symphony Orchestra. He taught at the Leningrad Conservatory, as well as at their school."
At age five, she started to take private lessons. Her very first teacher was, as Marina puts it "not too excited about new students whose hands were too small, but she was very patient and gave me the first steps to reading and playing music." When she was seven she auditioned for the Music School in Voskresenk, a suburb of Moscow. "Teachers liked me a lot," she recollects, "but at that time they had a minimum age requirement of nine years old. Also, space was limited. Three months later someone dropped out and I was invited to become a student."
All eight of the years she spent at the school she had one piano teacher: Obuhov Feodor Alexsandrovich. She recalls, "With a great deal of love, patience, and knowledge he built a very strong foundation for my development and growth as a musician and performer. He was creative and conservative... he was playful and strict. He pushed me to play exercises and scales and then let me play whatever I wanted as a reward. At that time in the Soviet method of teaching piano it was strictly forbidden to play by ear. Being a smart and caring teacher he encouraged me to play and was very supportive in my efforts to compose music." Marina also spent five years at Gnessin's Music College in Moscow, and then five years at the famous Gorky State Conservatory.
Thinking back over her performing career she tells me, "My most memorable performance was at age eight, when I played for the first time with a real orchestra on a real stage in a concert hall. It was "Concerto for
Piano and Orchestra in D Major" by Joseph Haydn."
Just back from Amsterdam, Marina sends me an e-mail. I had sent her one previously complimenting her on her work and asking for an interview. "It makes me so happy that my music makes a difference," she writes. "Specifically, work for the ballet I started here in the US in 1991 just to start working. There is always need for an accompanist who actually can play...and it helps if the pianist can play for ballet, which is a very different issue. To play music for ballet classes was survival for me. I got a job and was able to pay my bills and started to try other fields." From there I sent her the standard questions we use in interviews for retailers, and these are her replies.
Do you have any special tricks or is it just word of mouth about your services?
No, I don't have special tricks, and it is word of mouth which sells my work.
What have you done to compete?
I don't. I do not compete with anyone. I am doing what I can do best and I have my audience. If people don't like my style, so they don't like it.. I play classical music arranged for ballet. I improvise a lot when I am playing live for class, but for the recordings I try to do classical music. There are a few reasons:
Classical music helps to organize your thoughts and your body, and this is very important for classical ballet....your placement and line. Classical music offers this line and structure, if people listen.
It is so good for the students to be introduced to the music they have to know, but most of the time they never get to it. I arrange classical pieces to fit the combinations...mechanical movement and character on the movement. I do realize that a lot of teachers like their pianist to play some jazzy music and Broadway music. I like it , too, and I play this kind of music a lot in my solo concerts, but to help to grow a dancer, especially a classical dancer, I strongly believe that classical music is the best tool. So, I do what I believe in...and maybe this is a secret, I don't know... I am not going to try to play like other pianists. I know Douglas Corbin, and I love the way he plays, but I am not going to compete with him because we are so different. I am I, and he is he. That is just an example. The same I can say about Steven Mitchell. I don't think we are competing...at least I am not.
Do you travel a lot with your work?
I used to, but since I got a full time job as a member of the music faculty at the Harid Conservatory I don't travel as often. If I have an interesting offer, and I have time off I would go anywhere, but my job is my priority.
Were you a dancer?
No, I was never a dancer, although I took class a few times when I was pregnant. My doctor told me then that it was very good exercise.
At the end of her e-mail, Marina includes this post script:
"I have a second thought on competing. I always search for music which will touch your soul. It is not easy, there is so much beautiful music, but ballet requires certain things, like inner movement and special phrasing, so it becomes a task which I am doing with pleasure and joy. In my mind I have a whole series of CD's...the first one is out. It's featuring music by L. Minkus; the next one is almost ready to go and hopefully I will record it soon for a release in Spring 2006. It will feature music by R. Drigo. The third one I have planned will be with music by Russian composers.
I think carefully about Marina's insight into the effect of the music on dancers. My mind travels back to images of Kirov ballerina Irina Kolpakova, performing in "Raymonda." She had an ability to use her body the way a musician uses their instrument. I replayed the videotape of her over and over. She matched each note...every placement of the foot, every gesture, every movement, all of it, was perfectly aligned to the music. She made it look effortless. It seems this rare ability that she had cultivated was a result of her taking her musical sensitivity and understanding to such a high level. Her focus was on being musical, and I saw no fear, hesitation, or doubt in her dancing. She had put herself in a dimension where there was no limitation... that rare dimension of perfection. "It's in the music," my intuition tells me. All of the choreography, if it is taught well, and with the correct rhythm, is right there, in the music." Marina's music for ballet class provides the highest level of artistry that I have found. The effects are quite magical. I notice that the teachers in Los Angeles who have danced with the Kirov and Bolshoi companies favor her music in their classes, as well. They ought to know. Marina can be reached at www.MusicbyMarina.com.