Photo: Remsberg, Inc.
By Don Harrison
Andriy Milavsky likes to describe the music of his band, Cheres, as "Carpathian bluegrass."
"It's all from the Carpathian Mountains," says the multi-instrumentalist and bandleader who emigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine in 1991. "Our music is 75% Ukrainian, and we add some Romanian and Hungarian music. I compare it to American bluegrass, which I love, because it's really dusty, folky music."
The five-piece Cheres, led by Milavsky, will bring the mountain dust to this year's Richmond Folk Festival, armed with a high-energy repertoire of traditional Eastern European wedding marches and circle dances, many going back thousands of years. The Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress has called Cheres “the best purveyor of authentic Ukrainian folk music in the United States.” Milavsky, a technically proficient and conservatory-schooled clarinetist, has been referred to as “the Charlie Parker of Ukraine.” He lives in Midtown Manhattan with his wife, Lila, a retired writer and editor (and published poet) who was once the voice of Cheres.
"We are all conservatory trained. And it's a good thing because I listen to the village bands ... and I adore them, of course,” he says. “But we are polished, we are trained. And we package the music in a way that people can understand it."
The group's normal turf is in and around New York state. "There are more than a million Ukrainians in the tri-state area," he says. "In Manhattan alone, we have four churches, schools, bars, and restaurants. So when a group like mine is coming, we are very popular. We've played all of the festivals, large and small."
"The band is a continuation of an ensemble that Andriy originally assembled in Ukraine," says Pete Rushefsky, executive director of the New York-based Center for Traditional Music and Dance. "Cheres has gone through several evolutions in the States but thematically it's still there and Andriy is still out in front." Rushefsky appreciates the comparison to bluegrass music. "It has all the virtuosity, all the soulfulness and if you listen closely you can hear a little high-lonesome, especially in Andriy's clarinet and flute playing."
“It has all the virtuosity, all the soulfulness and if you listen closely you can hear a little high-lonesome, especially in Andriy’s clarinet and flute playing.” ”
Cheres was enthusiastically received at festivals across the country this summer. The response even surprised the bandleader. "During the show, you saw how the people liked it and they got up and danced," he says. "And they would shout in Ukrainian, 'Slava Ukriani'.... 'Glory to Ukraine,' and I know they aren't Ukrainian because they would say it with an accent. That brings me chills."
Milavsky's band performs for fundraisers to help the home country in its ongoing struggle against Russia, but Milavsky generally doesn't mention the current conflict in concerts. "I'm not a politician, I'm a musician," he says. "I just want people to know about Ukraine." He does note the uptick in bookings since the war began. "The longer it goes on, the more people discover Ukrainian culture and they want to support us. These days, I don't call people much [to perform], they call me."
Rushefsky's Center for Traditional Music and Dance represents dozens of touring immigrant and ethnic ensembles, including Cheres. He says this kind of cultural curiosity in light of horrific events is commonplace. "I think the incursion of Russia into Ukraine has been an awful experience for Andriy and the other musicians and their families. At the same time, it has people thinking about Ukraine and Ukrainian culture. Music has the ability to enhance understanding when there are limitations of language."
From the village to the conservatory
Andriy Milavsky, 61, was born in the village of Hryniv, in the Halychyna region on the outskirts of Lviv. His grandfather, Mykhailo Sypko, played the clarinet and led the village band alongside his brother. "He found a clarinet on the side of the road and he learned how to play it himself," Andriy recalls. "I was five years old when I started banging the drums for his band, just for fun. I absorbed all of this and loved it."
Photo: Remsberg, Inc.
Milavsky comes from a family of educators; as a child, he learned the accordion, following in the footsteps of his mother, a music teacher. (His father taught history.) He can now play more than 22 instruments, including the jaw harp, bagpipes and sopilka (traditional Ukrainian wooden flute). He tries to integrate as many as he can in concerts, but normally plays five or six during a festival performance.
When his grandfather died, Andriy inherited his clarinet, and that became his signature instrument. "I was attracted to it because it was my grandfather's instrument and it's a wooden instrument with a very warm sound." He and his older brother Levko took up clarinet together, began formal music training, and later entered the Kyiv State Conservancy of Music. Levko has enjoyed a long career in classical music, including a recent stint as the principal clarinetist for the Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Andriy received his master’s in 1986 and went on to perform across the world with Ukraine’s classical orchestras and in state-sanctioned folk concerts.
"My grandfather had a village band, with accordion, two clarinets, a violin, cimbalom and a drum,” Andriy remembers. “My grandfather's music was different from what we play. They played a lot of polka because that was music made for weddings and dances. For them, it was all waltzes and polkas."
“Folk music was actually supported by the Soviet regime. It took a political turn at times ... you’d have to play certain songs about the party in concert, but still it was folk music.” ”
When he formed the original incarnation of Cheres with fellow conservatory students, the repertoire started with a wide variety of traditional tunes, such as "Legend of the Opryshky," a ballad about a 15th-century Robin Hood"; "The Flurry," a bride-to-be's wedding processional; and "Kolomyiky," a traditional circle dance. "The old folk songs are very popular even today in Ukraine," he says. "Folk music was actually supported by the Soviet regime. It took a political turn at times ... you'd have to play certain songs about the party in concert, but still it was folk music."
Life as a musician under the Soviet system had its ups and downs, he recalls. "You were guaranteed gigs and performances and as a band leader you didn't have to organize anything, you'd just attend to the musical part. The government arranged it. The bad thing is that the people responsible were not very versatile in folk music ... That's why I decided to leave and explore the world and eventually came to the U.S."
A band like a fist
Milavsky left Ukraine the same year that his nation, then a Soviet republic, gained its independence from Russia. He had family here, primarily his uncle, who would send him and his brother new clarinets from America. At first, he wanted to play traditional jazz, a forbidden music back home. "I learned how to play that rolling jazz piano. If I had gone for the classical or the professional jazz [career], I might have more money today but it wasn't about the money, it was about the fact that I love this stuff and want to protect it.... It's very old, it's our own and it needs to be protected."
Even the band's name alludes to that. "Cheres is a thick leather belt, metal studded, used by the tree cutters,” Andriy explains. “In olden days it was a warrior's belt, basically a bulletproof vest. I called the band Cheres because we try to prevent these folk traditions from vanishing in a technological world and its progress. And they are vanishing." Because of that, he's fiercely protective of the old traditions.
"I've been approached by different musicians and managers who want me to mix it with African beats or [western music]. They'll say, 'Let's do it and see what happens.' But that's not my thing,” he says. “My thing is to keep this thing pure. Other people are experimenting, but I don't want to mix it. I can appreciate listening to someone else's project, but someone has to keep it how it was one hundred years ago."
At the same time that it preserves the sounds of the Carpathian Mountains, the group is careful not to embalm the music. "People ask me, 'Do you improvise?' Of course,” Andriy answers. “The audience can sense it. We have stops and cadenzas—you always play something different in a cadenza, you never play it the same way. It wouldn't be interesting to us to do that. But it's not a learned improvisation. We incorporate improvisation, not in jazz terms, but within the structure of the [music]."
"I can really only think of one other band like Cheres performing in America, and that's Harmonia out of Cleveland, Ohio," says Rushefsky. (Harmonia performed at the 2008 Richmond Folk Festival.) "In other cities, you might have one or two musicians who play the music but, with Cheres, you get to experience the music the way it's played in the Carpathians with a band of virtuosos, and that's really rare."
Festival attendees dancing during a Cheres performance.
Photo: Remsberg, Inc.
Over the years, the original members of Cheres dropped out, leaving Milavsky to incorporate new players. "I'm the last of the Mohicans," he jokes. "Some of them returned back to Ukraine to finish conservatory and some just moved to different fields, went to college, and learned English. Music is not an easy business to be in."
His current band—all of them with roots in Ukraine and neighboring countries—includes Igor Iachimciuc on the cimbalom, a hammered dulcimer prominent in Central and Eastern Europe. There's also Valeri Glava on fiddle, Victor Cebotari on accordion, and Branislav “Brano” Brinarsky playing double bass.
"Everybody is good in my group. All five of us. It's like a fist," says the master clarinetist. "Everybody is classically trained and is also grassroots; everybody knows tradition and loves it and supports it."