Alexander Tsfasman
Alexander Naumovich Tsfasman (14 December 1906, Aleksandrovsk, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire – 20 February 1971, Moscow, USSR) was a Soviet pianist, composer, arranger, conductor, orchestra leader, publicist, and cultural figure. He is regarded as one of the founders of Soviet jazz and led several jazz ensembles, including AMA-Jazz (1926–1930), the Alexander Tsfasman Jazz Orchestra (1932–1939), and, as artistic director, the Jazz Orchestra of All-Union Radio (1939–1946). He was awarded the honorary title Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1957.
He was born in Aleksandrovsk (today Zaporizhzhia) into a Jewish family. His father, Nokhim-Yitzkhok Aizikovich Tsfasman, later known as Naum Isaakovich Tsfasman (1875–1936), was a barber originally from Petrikov in the Minsk Governorate; his mother was Perl Srul-Iosifovna, later Polina Izrailevna Tsfasman, née Gokhgilernt (1886–1928). During the Civil War the family moved to Nizhny Novgorod to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. Tsfasman studied violin and piano from the age of seven and entered the piano department of a music technical school at twelve. At thirteen, in 1919, he won first prize for his performance of Franz Liszt’s Eleventh Rhapsody, and from 1920 to 1923 he played percussion in a symphony orchestra in Nizhny Novgorod.
In 1923 Tsfasman moved to Moscow, where he headed the music department of the A. S. Griboyedov Moscow Drama Studio from 1924 to 1925. From 1925 to 1930 he studied at the Moscow Conservatory in the piano class of Felix Blumenfeld, graduating with a gold medal. He developed a distinctive pianistic manner noted for vivid virtuosity combined with poetic refinement; contemporaries emphasized the instantly recognizable character of his playing.
Tsfasman began composing in 1924, with early pieces such as “Eccentric Dance” and “Sad Mood.” In 1926 he founded Moscow’s first jazz orchestra, AMA-Jazz, acting as its conductor, pianist, and arranger. The ensemble became a pioneer of Soviet jazz performance and recording: it played jazz on Soviet radio in 1927 and was among the first to make jazz gramophone recordings, including “Alleluia.” AMA-Jazz performed at the Hermitage Garden, the Casino restaurant on Triumfalnaya Square, and in the foyers of Moscow cinemas. His colorful arrangements quickly earned a reputation in musical circles, drawing the interest of Isaac Dunayevsky, who repeatedly attended the ensemble’s rehearsals, while the young Kyiv composer Artur Polonsky dedicated his first jazz work, “Jazz-Foxtrot,” to him.
In the early 1930s he worked as a cinema accompanist and musical illustrator and later served as répétiteur at the Bolshoi Theatre school (1933–1934). In 1932 he organized the ensemble “Moscow Guys,” also known as the Jazz Orchestra of Alexander Tsfasman, which performed at the Savoy restaurant, toured widely across the country, and took part in Moscow jazz events in 1936. At the same time he appeared as a solo pianist, earning admiration from such musicians as Alexander Goldenweiser, Konstantin Igumnov, Heinrich Neuhaus, and Dmitri Shostakovich. For Asaf Messerer he wrote the choreographic number “Footballer,” staged by Igor Moiseyev, which remained in the dancer’s repertoire for three decades. In the early 1950s Shostakovich invited him to perform a substantial piano part in an orchestral episode for the film “The Unforgettable Year 1919,” noting Tsfasman’s special suitability for the task.
From 1939 to 1946 he led the Jazz Orchestra of All-Union Radio, collaborating with prominent singers including Ivan Kozlovsky, Sergei Lemeshev, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Mark Bernes, Vladimir Bunchikov, Efrem Flaks, and Ruzhena Sikora. The orchestra also became a starting point for many notable instrumentalists, among them Mikhail Frumkin, Emil Geigner, Alexander Rivchun, Valentin Berlinsky, Igor Gladkov, and the drummer Laci Olah. During World War II the orchestra was evacuated to Kuibyshev in 1941–1942 and later performed for troops at the front. Tsfasman also wrote wartime songs, including “The Cheerful Tankman” and “Young Sailors,” and he became one of the early Soviet proponents of swing; from 1944 the orchestra increasingly performed Western repertoire and adopted signature swing-style big-band arrangements.
Tsfasman is associated with landmark performances of George Gershwin in Moscow. In the victory year 1945 he presented “Rhapsody in Blue” with the All-Union Radio Orchestra under Nikolai Golovanov, performing it both in the Column Hall of the House of Unions and in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. In March 1955, with an orchestra conducted by Nikolai Anosov, he again performed Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in the Column Hall. From 1946 he headed the music department of the Hermitage variety theater and continued composing for film and theatre. A jubilee concert marking his 50th birthday and 40 years of creative activity took place in December 1956.
His catalog includes symphonic and concert works that merge classical forms with jazz idioms, such as “Savoy Blues” for piano (1927), dedicated to the London jazz band The Savoy Orpheans; the ballet suite “Rot-Front” (1931); a “Concerto for Piano with Jazz Orchestra” (1941); an “Intermezzo for Clarinet and Jazz Orchestra” dedicated to Benny Goodman (1944); a suite for piano and orchestra (1945); a concerto for piano and symphony orchestra (1956); and the “Sports Suite” for sympho-jazz (1965). He also wrote songs that became associated with Soviet popular music, including “On a Long Journey,” “By the Seashore,” “An Unsuccessful Date,” “How Can I Forget,” “You Are Not Here,” “I Am Not Saying Goodbye,” and “A Chance Meeting,” as well as music for the song “Three Waltzes.” He contributed to film music, including scores for “Pages of Life” (1948), the short films “Tarapunka and Shtepsel Above the Clouds” (1953) and “The Secret of Beauty” (1955), “Merry Stars” (1954, with Isaac Dunayevsky), and “Behind the Department Store Window” (1955), as well as animated films including “Noisy Voyage” (1937, with Alexei Sokolov-Kamin) and “Forest Concert” (1953). He also wrote music for the theatre production “To the Rustle of Your Eyelashes” at the Central Puppet Theatre (1948).
Tsfasman made numerous recordings with his orchestras, including a substantial series in the late 1930s, and as an accompanist he recorded in 1946 with Leonid Utyosov. He also participated in recordings for films such as “The Russian Question” (1947) and “Meeting on the Elbe” (1949, music by Shostakovich). Recalling his work with Shostakovich, Tsfasman wrote with admiration of the composer’s rhythmic drive, stylistic accuracy, and intuitive command of jazz idiom.
In 1966 Tsfasman became a founding member of the International Jazz Federation under UNESCO, in a delegation that included Willis Conover and Alexey Batashov. He lived in Moscow at 20 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street and was known for his passion for cultivating roses; his country plot was remembered as a veritable rose garden maintained with great care. He died in Moscow in 1971 and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery, section 22.
His family included his first wife, Gertrude Grandel (1920–1969), an American from Detroit who came to the USSR with her parents in 1935, studied at the Leningrad Conservatory, worked for the Karelian Radio Committee in Petrozavodsk, and later appeared in variety programs; a gramophone recording survives of her playing marimba in duet with Tsfasman at the piano. Their son, Robert Tsfasman (1939–2010), was a journalist and translator who graduated from Moscow State University and worked for more than thirty years at the Novosti Press Agency on the magazine Soviet Life. His second wife was Ksenia Grigoryevna Kukhtina (1914–2001), a former musical-hall dancer educated at the Bolshoi ballet school. His sister Adele Tsfasman (1915–1992) worked as a concertmaster at the Gorky Philharmonic.
After his death his reputation continued to grow through reissues, commemorations, reconstructions of his original scores, and concert revivals. An album of his music, “Weary Sun,” appeared on CD in 2000 in the “Anthology of Jazz” series, and in 2002 his name returned to the poster of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory when the Saratov Retro Jazz Orchestra performed his music there. His centenary was celebrated in 2006 in the Column Hall of the House of Unions, for which the same orchestra restored more than thirty authentic scores from his repertory. Later stage projects, including “Playing Tsfasman,” continued to revive his works. A commemorative sign was installed for him on Moscow’s “Stars of Pop” square in 1998, and in 2020 a pop-art mural portrait of him by Alexander Korban was created on the wall of the Leshchinsky House in Zaporizhzhia, a building associated with his early life.
Connections
This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.