“I taught you how to play, now try to outplay me”.

That was Daniil Kramer used to say to his students. And there were many of them, laureats, fellowship holders, and Gnessin or Conservatory students – all of them sooner or later would hear this phrase. “I’m a man of a competition”, the legendary Soviet jazz pianist Kramer confesses.

As for Kramer, in the tander age of 15 he become a Repuplican Competition laureate, as both pianist and composer. After that, when he was a student of Gnessin Istitute (nowdays Gnessin Academy) he delved seriously in both classic and jazz. And in the age of 22 he won a jazz competition in Vilnius, as jazz improviser. It was then that his professor Yevgeny Liberman (a disciple of the great Heinrich Neuhaus) once and for all defined his artistic way: “It’s your thing, but you should finish your studies of classical music, for all your life you gonna play both genres”.

“I’ve never ever left classics”, the student would say later. “Sure, I spend several years playing jazz, but I don’t consider myself as a dyed in a wool jazzman. I’ve always been one of those who float from classics, jazz, and crossover, back and forth. I’m somewhere in the middle of that triange, and, to speak truth, my position perfectly suits me”.

During his concerts and large-scale projects with different musicians (soloists, bands, symphony orchestras), Kramer tends to create unique fusion of classics, blues, world music, even putting some rock and avant-garde to the mix. It’s the so – called Third Stream. 

Since the 90’s Kramer has been a regular participant of all Russian and greatest foreign festivals. It was Kramer who brought jazz to Russian academic halls. Since 1995 he has been the organizer of annual concert cycles in Moscow and Russian regions called “Jazz Music in Academic Halls”, “Jazz Nights with Daniil Kramer”, “Classics and Jazz”.

Daniil Kramer has many honor titles. European Prize named after Gustav Mahler was given to him in 2000, thus making him the first ever jazz – non-classical! – musician to receive the title. There are many other prizes given to him, and he is proud that “none of them I was begging for”.
It’s not only music that he improvises, but stories onstage also. He never knows where his narration would lead him. So every night is an intrigue. “Zaryedye” audience will see the birth of just another mono spectacle!