Roman Turovsky   Tue, 11 Jan 2000 13:13:06 -0500
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Howdy,
Here is my eight cents worth:
I am Roman Turovsky, 38, living in NYC, and expecting divine retribution in
June in the form of TWINS.

I am an artist-painter by profession, which means I have to earn my living
elsewhere, which, in my case, is painting scenery for film and television,
most notably for Jim Jarmusch's forthcoming film.

Until 1979 I lived in Kiev, Ukraine. There was always music in the family,
as my father [also an artist] was an excellent amateur bass-baritone, but I
was totally immune to music, to my parents' desperation, until the age of
15, when I walked into our living room during Siegfried's Funeral Music from
the "Gottesdammerung" and I haven't been the same since.

One of my father's favorite word's was/is "mythopoiesis", but its
significance took on physical dimention much later.

By 1977 I had 3 LP's by 2 Soviet lutenists Aleksandr Vavilov and Sandor
Callocz. The latter sometimes accompanied the Lisitsians [the great Armenian
dynasty of opera and chamber singers] for their Renaissance novelty act,
which included lute songs with vocal parts reconstructed from pieces with
lyrics in the Chilesotti book.

Then came the emigration with all its inherent misery, so all the secret
proclivities [alog with non-secret ones] had to be put on hold.
I could easily blame my irritation at all major keys on this, but more
likely that is just the way I am, with low tolerance for sugar. One of
life's disappointments is that Shostakovich did not write for Baroque Lute,
and that Zbigniew Herbert wrote no texts for lute songs...

We came to Bronx in NYC in 1979. I started college [Art] in 1980, while
packing bags for shoppers at a local supermarket on weekends.
Than there were a couple of fateful incidents. In 1981 a college friend
taught me a couple of pieses from the Oscar Chilesotti's book on guitar. And
in 1984 I saw a "lute" in a window of Noah Wulfe's Guitar Shop on 57th
Street in   NYC and I just had to have it. That mistake only lasted 1 year,
until I met somebody who has heard of Pat O'Brien, with whom I went on to
study on and off for about 6 years.

My first real lute was, briefly [as I really had no mind for the renaissance
music] a Larry Brown 10-course Frey, quickly succeeded by a number of
13-course lutes, of which I now own 2 almost identical Martin Brunner-1765's
also by Larry Brown.

Eventually, "me befell" the proprietorship of the "Sautscheck Werke
Verzeichniss'', but that is another story....

Once a girl called Cecilia was once very surprised by a casket her date
brought along. She still is surprised 10 years later....

RT