{"id":20347,"date":"2018-04-11T23:39:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T03:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20347"},"modified":"2018-04-11T23:39:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T03:39:51","slug":"piano-paves-path-to-homecoming-for-york-region-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/piano-paves-path-to-homecoming-for-york-region-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Piano paves path to \u201chomecoming\u201d for York Region artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Growing up in Siberia with a family he describes as a \u201clong line of engineers and soldiers,\u201d young Vlad Soloviev didn\u2019t have many opportunities to flex his musical muscles.
\nBut that all changed as a teen when his family moved from Siberia to York Region and his parents bought him his very first piano.
\nThat first piano started Mr. Soloviev on a journey that has taken him around the world and this Friday, April 13, it brings him home again as part of the Great Artist Music Series at the Aurora Cultural Centre.
\nThe Toronto-based pianist, chamber musician and choral conductor has been hailed for his versatile repertoire, championing the works not only of the classics, but also contemporary Canadian composers.
\nThis week, the music director at Newmarket\u2019s Trinity United Church will present works by Debussy, Beethoven, Busoni, Liszt and Scriabin, all with an eye \u2013 and ear \u2013 of forging a connection with local audiences.
\n\u201cWe live in a time where people are short on time and not everyone is willing to spend that time listening to classical music, and that takes a lot of time to get to know,\u201d says Mr. Soloviev, stating he wants audience members to feel these are works that are as relevant today as ever before. \u201cIt is still something worth their while listening to, that there is a back and forth on what compelled the composer to write it, while people are still listening to it 300 years later.\u201d
\nHaving arrived in Canada at the age of 14 and settling in Woodbridge, it took Mr. Soloviev just two years to decide to take the piano more seriously, pursuing arts programs at Unionville High School and moving on to higher things.
\n\u201cSiberia had music schools, but it is not really a place where you would be encouraged to do that sort of thing, especially in a family like mine,\u201d he says. \u201cI did a lot of math and sports and there was no real time for music with all the math I was doing, but I always wanted to play. I had been interested in the piano for as long as I can remember.
\n\u201cWhen we moved here, apart from the complete change of scenery, language and culture, suddenly I had a lot of free time on my hands. I went to my parents one more time to see if we could do this, so they bought me a piano. They were never against music, but they had their priorities elsewhere.\u201d
\nFinally having the chance to pursue this dream, Vlad says he experienced \u201csuch a joy\u201d in the process. His path was unorthodox, he says, in that it was something he always liked and didn\u2019t have any outside pressure to stick to his studies. He had time to grow on his own.
\n\u201cYou try and you fail, you try and you fail, sometimes it gets discouraging,\u201d he says. \u201cYou go to a serious school where people practice twelve hours a day and it is a very rigorous environment. Any conscious person would ask themselves if they are good enough to do this \u2013 and my answer to that didn\u2019t become much later.\u201d
\nAs a pianist, Vlad says he has a particular affinity for Beethoven because he \u201cinfuses his music with a sort of humanistic mission\u201d which he finds fascinating.
\n\u201cGrowing up in the atmosphere of the enlightenment, especially in the early years of the French revolution, he was really inspired by these ideas that were so progressive at the time,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of his music displays that with things. A lot of his piano sonatas are different for that reason too. The way he structures them, there is some deep stuff in there and absolutely fascinating to learn and play. They are quite beautiful works in themselves. It has been one of my goals to play and record his last six piano sonatas. I am five down and one to go!\u201d
\nLooking ahead to Friday, Vlad says he is particularly excited not only to play before a hometown crowd, but also at the opportunity to take what he describes as a more \u201cinformal\u201d approach to a mainstream classical concert.
\nHe wants an evening that will be \u201capproachable and fun\u201d and an evening that will impart the joy he gets from playing pieces like Beethoven\u2019s later sonatas, which \u201cgives me almost a quasi-religious experience every time I play them.\u201d
\n\u201cI want to see if I can make it happen so people who listen to a Beethoven sonata for the very first time will be able to get something cool, profound and transformative and unique that they will remember and take with them out of the concert hall.\u201d
\nFor more information, including tickets, visit www.auroraculturalcentre.ca\/events\/vladsoloviev or call 905-713-1818. The Great Artist Series is sponsored by Bonnie and Norbert Kraft.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in Siberia with a family he describes as a \u201clong line of engineers and soldiers,\u201d young Vlad Soloviev didn\u2019t have many opportunities to flex his musical muscles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/2018-04-12-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5ib","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 06:05:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}