I downloaded the temporarily "name your price" album entitled "Ruslan" by Ruslan Sirota, the pianist on Josh Groban's latest tour -- the tour promoting the "All that Echoes" album.
If you want to download Ruslan's album, here is the link:
Ruslan is a grammy award winning piano player, having won in 2011 as part of the Stanley Clarke Band -- for best jazz album.
Ruslan is also a charismatic performer with a great sense of humor. He was spotted by fans, once, in the after concert crowd, clamoring for Josh Groban's autograph, pretending to be an audience member.
Watching Ruslan play is entertaining, because he moves around a lot. His emotional involvement with the music shows. His solo in this video starts at about 4:48
He is known as a jazz pianist. It's interesting to me that Josh's musicians seem to tend toward jazz. When André Manga and Mark Stephens released albums, they were also typed as jazz. Chris Botti, who Josh has collaborated with, is characterized as a jazz musician. Josh, himself, doesn't do much jazz, tho some of his pieces, like "Un Alma Mas" and "Machine" are jazz or jazz-like.
While I like Josh Groban, I don't like jazz, usually, so it's curious that he seems to attract so many jazz musicians.
I get fond of these musicians, because they're generally nice people and they're with Josh, and I'm a Grobanite, so I want to support their work, but it's difficult when I don't like the music.
So, I listened to Ruslan's album on line for a while and was pleasantly surprised that it was something I thought I could enjoy listening to. I'm not sure if it's quite jazz, exactly. Ruslan had said something to the effect that it didn't quite fit into a genre. I guess I would say it's jazz-like, but there are also parts that seem pop or classical.
That makes him fit in with Josh, who also tends to not fit into genres.
I decided to get it -- and I did pay something for it.
I decided to get it -- and I did pay something for it.
So I'm listening to this album and I do like it.
Then comes the interesting part about the vocals. There is one song, Sister Moon, that features a professional vocalist, but several of the songs seem to have Ruslan himself singing.
Ruslan is a professional pianist. Every note that he plays absolutely screams professional perfection.
Ruslan is not a professional vocalist. His vocals sound decidedly amateurish -- though they are affectingly vulnerable and personal. He also has an accent in English, which is some combination of his Ukrainian/Israeli background. Some of the songs feature him singing lyrics. Others just have him humming along.
I tweeted him that I thought perhaps the first song might be better with a professional vocalist. Since the singing is light and high, I was thinking maybe Ben Folds or something like that.
A couple of Ruslan's fans promptly tweeted me that they loved Ruslan's vocals and that those vocals were their favorite part of the album.
This reminded me of the situation with Connie Talbot, another artist who I am following.
She came in second on Britain's Got Talent in 2007 at age 6, and has had some reasonably successful professional albums; but where she has really shone has been in her YouTube channel,
which has featured many home videos. Filmed by her sister, singing karaoke to many of the latest pop hits, Connie started racking up millions of views. Now she's up over 100 million. She has toured, predominantly in Asia, and sung on the Spring Festival, in China which has hundreds of millions of viewers, perhaps closer to a billion.
Also, we have been watching her learn to play the piano and the guitar. Even if the first instances of her playing were not adult, professional quality, it was still fun, because we could see her making progress.
Her performances are often simple and low key.
She got taken to Hollywood at one point, where they did some slick videos of her and had her do a single called "Sail Away." This song and video were very professionally done and also reasonably successful, but, to my ear decidedly less interesting and certainly less visually affecting that what I was experiencing on the YouTube channel -- and also less interesting than the songs she co-wrote herself.
Also, for me, as a fan of her YouTube channel, I could not get enthused about the slick, professional videos that they did for her in California. I wanted the home videos, filmed by her sister. Her sister was better at capturing Connie especially since they were relaxed at home.
In any case, I've seen enough glitzy stuff in my life.
So I wrote several times in the comments on the YouTube channel that I preferred the home videos. The people working with her seem to have listened, because most of her videos now, even though with a professional producer and musicians, are of a homey, informal variety, rather than a glitzy, Hollywood type.
The music is great, and quite professional, but the videos are low key, not particularly professional looking.
Connie prefers to refer to her fans as "friends," rather than fans. She really wants to be friends with everyone. One gets the clear impression that she pursues pop music, YouTube, and twitter, not because she wants to make money, though she has made money, but rather as social media, for a social purpose.
Similarly Ruslan has made friends with a lot of us on twitter, where he assiduously responds to Grobanites' tweets. He's a likable fellow, sociable, a real person.
And he gives a limited time, "name your price," release of this album with its absolutely formal, professional and perfect instrumentals and its less formal vocals.
It's sort of like Connie's YouTube channel, which has professional sounding music, with amateur-looking video.
Josh Groban similarly has favored blogs which are extremely informal -- and where he sometimes looks decidedly disheveled -- and music videos, which are fairly low key.
Josh Groban similarly has favored blogs which are extremely informal -- and where he sometimes looks decidedly disheveled -- and music videos, which are fairly low key.
I think we're seeing a sea change in the entertainment industry here. Media are allowing musicians to contact fans directly. Fans want to be friends with the performers and want to be let in. To the extent that the performers seem relaxed and homey, the fans feel that sense of friendship and being let in. Social media, especially twitter, with its 140 characters, makes direct contact with performers possible.
"Toto, we're not in Kansas any more."
Addendum:
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BTW I would characterize Ruslan's album as peaceful and contemplative -- very relaxing to listen to.
Addendum:
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BTW I would characterize Ruslan's album as peaceful and contemplative -- very relaxing to listen to.
