Raykhelson is Reviving the Carnegie Hall-Premiered ‘Adagio’ He Wrote as a witness to the attacks on New York’s Twin Towers
“Armonie di Pace” brings Igor Raykhelson and violinist Ekaterina Astashova to Pietrasanta’s Piazza del Duomo on September 11, pairing a classical-jazz career built across two continents with a piece born from tragedy.
PIETRASANTA, Italy — On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the American composer and pianist Igor Raykhelson will stand in the historic Piazza del Duomo in Pietrasanta and perform the piece he wrote from his Manhattan home in their aftermath of the tragic events of that day.
The free, open-air concert, titled “Armonie di Pace” (“Harmonies of Peace”), pairs Raykhelson with Astashova performing her violin, for an evening billed as a meeting point of classical repertoire and contemporary sensibility.
At its center, is a personal act of remembrance.
A career built on fusion
Born in Leningrad in 1961, Raykhelson trained at the storied Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in Russia before continuing his musical education in New York, the city that would later reshape his creative direction. Over a career spanning both classical and jazz idioms, he has become known for a distinctive neo-romantic voice enriched by jazz harmony and improvisation. This is a fusion that has drawn collaborators including saxophonist Igor Butman, bassist Eddie Gomez, vibraphonist Joe Locke and violist-conductor Yuri Bashmet. His catalog spans numerous chamber and orchestral works, and he is now based in Tuscany, where he continues to compose and perform.
That crossover sensibility extends to his artistic partnership with Astashova, a graduate of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory who spent years as a first violinist in the orchestra led by Bashmet before turning, from 2010 onward, toward jazz and crossover projects. This has included works written expressly for her and collaborations with Butman.
A regular presence at festivals in Italy, Germany and Russia, Astashova joins Raykhelson not only on stage in Pietrasanta but as a co-organizer. The pair regularly develop festivals and concerts across Italy’s Versilia coast and beyond, building out between classical audiences and jazz-inflected new music.
The piece behind the date
The September 11 date for “Armonie di Pace” is deliberate. Raykhelson was living in New York and witnessed the 2001 attacks first hand which was an experience that led him to compose “Adagio,” a work he has described as a personal reflection on grief and memory. The piece premiered at Carnegie Hall in April 2003, with Yuri Bashmet as soloist, and has remained one of the most personally significant entries in Raykhelson’s catalog ever since.
In Pietrasanta, Raykhelson will address the audience directly before performing the work, dedicating “Adagio” to the memory of the victims and their families of 9/11 a moment organizers describe as the emotional core of an evening otherwise built around some of the violin-and-piano repertoire’s most beloved pages.
What they say:
“I wrote ‘Adagio’ because I had no other way to process what I had seen. Twenty-five years later, playing it in a piazza in Italy instead of a hall in New York, the meaning hasn’t changed as it’s still about turning grief into something we can share, and hopefully something closer to peace.” Igor Raykhelson
“The point of the program is for it to move between the languages of Bartók, Piazzolla, jazz, and the classical repertoire. Music doesn’t need a shared language to bring people together, and on a night like this one, that feels like the whole message.” Ekaterina Astashova
The program
Alongside Raykhelson’s “Adagio,” the evening moves through Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesfreud,” Tchaikovsky’s “Mélodie,” Pablo de Sarasate’s “Romanza Andaluza,” the Scherzo Brahms contributed to the F-A-E Sonata, Astor Piazzolla’s “Oblivion” and Rodion Shchedrin’s “Homage to Albéniz”.
The program spans over a century of music and crosses classical, Romani-inflected and tango traditions alike.
