Odessa jazzmen Vadim Bessarab Trio released a new album Approximation. This is a very soothing jazz that helps to calm down and ground.

Cover photo: Mira Mukhina

Vadim Bessarab - pianist, accompanist and teacher. Graduated from the Odessa Conservatory in 2002. His students have repeatedly become laureates of international jazz competitions—author of about a dozen compositions, founder of the Vadim Bessarab Trio. The trio’s sound combines jazz traditions and academic expressiveness, ethnic moods and contemplation characteristic of the modern European jazz language.

Tis is the second work of the trio, their debut album "Differences" was nominated for the title of the best Ukrainian album of 2020 according to the Aprize Music Awards.

The musicians define their style as European jazz, inspired by the music published by ECM and ACT labels, in particular Bobo Stenson Trio and Alboran Trio.

Music is essential to me. Everything happens through the prism of sounds and the realization that I am a musician. There are other important things - they affect the music, and the piece affects them. This is quite common and vital. Fortunately, you don't have to choose; you can be a musician and anyone else simultaneously.

Vadim Bessarab

The trio includes Vadim Bessarab (piano), Maxim Kondratiev (double bass) and Andrey Goncharov (drums). Participants of the Jazz Bez (2018) and Odessa Jazz Fest (2020) festivals.

Music is the most crucial part of my life. The multitude and variety of projects in which you take part, the huge number of people united by one idea, with whom you interact and create, makes the process of making music invaluable. Music is a palette with paints: the artist makes a sketch, and we paint it all with our tools, like brushes.

Maxim Kondratiev

For me, music is primarily a matter of life, a way of communicating with people and a tool for self-knowledge. Like any other art form, music is a way to convey a certain image emotion to the listener. And I want the music that I perform to make people's hearts a little kinder and more sensitive.

Andrey Goncharov

Recording — Cyril Oleynikov
Mixing — Cyril Oleynikov
Mastering — Toby Davis
Album cover — Mira Mukhina

Where does music come from? Silence, I'm sure. Often in the morning, when my hearing is still fresh and especially receptive, I sit down at the instrument and cannot make a sound. A kind of numbness, inexpressible. I prefer to play less than I could. Pauses give power over the sounded space.

Vadim Bessarab