Vasily Zubkov
11 y.o. Russian Genius composer
- Vasya, you are a very talented boy, our editors are SO impressed. Tell us once again - how old are you?
- I just turned 12 years old.
- Incredible! Since what age do you write music? How did it all begin?
- Music was always spinning in my head. I started learning musical instruments very early and I constantly played something. My first ever sheet music were piano pieces which I wrote at the age of 7.
- Do you have music education? Do you attend music school or any other classes? What is your hobby besides music?
- I study piano at music school. I take part in a lot of competitions, winning regularly, both as a performer and as a composer. Also I attend classes of composition where my teacher is an Honored Art Worker, famous Russian composer and professor of NNGK - Getselev Boris Semenovich. I love swimming and I can swim well in different sports styles thanks to my mom, she is a swimming coach. I love reading a lot of fiction, poetry and I study history with great enthusiasm. This is an important inspirational source for me and many of my plays are based on novels and historical events. For example: 451 ° Fahrenheit (R. Bradbury), Great Expectations (C. Dickens), Tales of the South Seas (J. London), Tomorrow was a war (B. Vasiliev), Iliad and Odyssey (Homer). I turned to the topic of history in my four parts suite for the quintet called ‘Rome. Fall of the Republic’. For my age, I know something about art and I visit exhibitions with great pleasure.
- It all comes from the family, I guess. Who are your parents - are they musicians? Did they guide you on your journey?
- I have a creative family. My father, grandfather and grandmother are architects, they draw well, my grandfather is a professor of architecture, a full member of the Academy of World Artists. All members of my family are passionate music lovers and music never stops playing in our house.
- Do you have brothers or sisters? If yes, do they make music too?
- I have a younger brother, who will turn 6 y.o. soon. I started teaching him piano at the age of 4. This year he entered a music school.
- Why did you write music for ‘Alice in Wonderland’?
- ‘Alice’ is an incredible book! If you read it carefully, this dilogy is not just a fairy tale in the style of absurd. It talks about complicated things. For example, about the relativity of time (there is no tomorrow, crazy tea drinking), speed and movement (you have to run twice as fast to get somewhere), violation of dimensions, fluidity of time and things. it is unclear what and where things end and begin, how they change and move. Possibly this is a world where there are no titles and names. Does the world exist in us or do we exist in it? Do we live a waking dream or is reality a dream? Mathematical and logical riddles, each chapter of the book is full of them and one can find entire studies of this text. Very interesting characters, exciting events. Writing music based on this book is an incredible experience for me.
- What are your ambitions? What is your dream?
- I can’t live without music and all my plans and ambitions are connected with it. Surely I want to be a successful person and I do everything for it.
- What would you like to say to your peers?
- Don't be afraid to be yourself! Try to understand what is close to you and what you are interested in, take it seriously. And I'm also anyone would win from listening to good music, reading good books, watching beautiful films and visiting museums. We should strive towards an ideal of an ancient person, spiritually and physically perfect.
- What kind of music do you like besides classical? What are your favorite bands? What instruments do you play? Can you sing?
- I love jazz, blues, classical rock, metal. Since its founding in 2015, Im a permanent singer (growling) and drummer of the extreme metal band called ‘Dual Nature’. The band took a prize at “Casting Young Talents” by Oceanic Music Major Label, took part in rock festivals like ‘Dobrofest’ (Yaroslavl), ‘First Children's Rock Festival’ (Moscow), ‘Bereg Mowgli’ (Pavlovo), ‘International rock-festival ‘Emerganza’. I was 6 when the band was founded. Perhaps I was the youngest member of an active, concert metal band in the world!
There are a lot of my favorite bands!
October 2020
by Lil Safonova