Daniel Kramer: Etude-Humoresque “Little Devil“ (from “6 Concert Etudes“)

Composer: Daniel Kramer (1960-) Date of composition: 1984 – 1987 Performer: Kristina Miller (1986-) @kristinamiller891 Date of recording: 2023 “In the USSR in the 80s of the 20th century, there was a somewhat strange attitude to jazz music: on the one hand, it was like “pro–American” music, on the other – jazz was developing rapidly, accumulating all information from any sources that could appear in the USSR during the “Iron Curtain”. I graduated from the Gnessin Institute (now the Russian Academy of Music) in 1983, and already in 1984, I performed at my first professional jazz festival in Vitebsk (Belarus), writing for this performance one of the sketches presented here, “Credo”. I named it that way because even then I understood that, loving both classical and jazz music at the same time, I would play in both aesthetics all my life. In addition, even then I saw in my country a huge prospect of mixing these styles, and time has shown that I was not wrong then. When in 1987 the publishing house “Soviet Music” decided to print my etudes together with “8 Concert Etudes” by Nikolai Kapustin, I was not allowed to keep the name “Credo”, because, according to the editors of that time, it was ideologically wrong and glorified religious aspirations. My explanations of the true meaning of the title did not make an impression, and the etude was called “Inspiration” by the editors. Nevertheless, in all my concert performances I continued to print the name “Credo”. There were no problems with the other five etudes during publication. They were written specifically to develop professional piano and professional jazz piano skills. In addition to purely artistic tasks, each etude has a clearly defined technological task, emphasized by fingering and punctuation. The etudes are written in a variety of styles because when writing them, I also pursued the tasks of stylistic training. I sincerely wish all future performers to enjoy both working on the etudes and performing them, and for future listeners to enjoy the music.“ (Daniel Kramer, Muse Press) Original audio: (Этюд-юмореска “Чёртик“)