Pekarsky Percussion Ensemble

[a=Mark Pekarsky] founded his [b]Ensemble of Percussion Instruments[/b] in 1976. Before their sold-out debut concert at the Moscow House of Scientists, featuring [a=Dmitri Shostakovich], [a=Vyacheslav Artyomov], [a=Carlos Chávez] and [a=Alan Hovhaness], Soviet listeners never heard chamber music for percussion as a leading instrument.

Pekarsky Percussion Ensemble debuted with tremendous success in Europe at the 36th Berliner Festwochen festival in 1986. Presenting a program of Sofia Gubaidulina's [i]Jubilatio[/i], Artyomov's [i]Totem[/i], and [i]Daily Routine[/i] by [a=Vladimir Martynov], they became famous overnight, with triumphant reviews in press referring to Pekarsky's group as the "eastern competitors" to [a=Les Percussions De Strasbourg] (hugely popular in Europe at the time). Solo concerts at various festivals followed, such as [i]Warsaw Autumn[/i], [i]Wien Modern[/i], [i]Sacro Art[/i] and [i]International Junifestwochen[/i] in Germany, [i]New Beginnings, Soviet Arts in Glasgow[/i] at the UK, [i]Fete de la Percussion[/i] and [i]Rencontres Internationales de Percussion[/i] in France. On the verge of their success, even [url=https://discogs.com/label/15486]Melodiya[/url] released [r=4190255] album in 1989.

Usually, the ensemble features six members on various percussion and exotic/DIY instruments from Mark Pekarsky's extensive collection (anything from Tibetan two-headed [i]damaru[/i] drum made of a human skull or Arabian [i]darbuka[/i] to [i]skilletophone[/i] built from various skillets organized by tone). The ensemble has an exclusive repertoire of over 300 compositions, and several generations of outstanding Russian composers wrote for Pekarsky and his group, including [a=Alfred Schnittke], [a=Sofia Gubaidulina], [a=Edison Denisov], [url=https://discogs.com/artist/1494253]Viktor Suslin[/url], [a=Alexander Knaifel], [url=https://discogs.com/artist/3087231]Alexander Vustin[/url], and [url=https://discogs.com/artist/2417714]Aleksander Raskatov[/url].

[b]Current line-up:[/b]
Mark Pekarsky, artistic direction, multi-percussion
Andrey Doynikov, percussion instruments
Andrey Vinnitsky, percussion instruments
Dmitry Shchyolkin, percussion instruments
Dmitry Vlasik, percussion instruments
Anton Vashukov, percussion instruments