MONTREAL – Airat Ichmouratov is one of Montreal’s major go-to guys when it comes to both klezmer and Jewish symphony music, although the award-winning clarinetist-composer-conductor happens not to be Jewish.
Kleztory, the famed five-member klezmer band to which he belongs, plays a varied klezmer repertoire with Boris Brott’s McGill Chamber Orchestra (MCO) at 7:30 p.m. on March 22 at Salle Pierre-Mercure, 300 de Maisonneuve Blvd. E.
That evening, Ichmouratov also conducts his own Chamber Symphony no. 3, op. 25 and plays Mozart with the orchestra.
His versatility and passion for Jewish music has its roots in Russia, where he was mentored by his conducting teacher, Albert Gilfanov, while attending the Kazan Conservatory in the Republic of Tatarstan. Ichmouratov was already playing for the opera, ballet and state symphonies.
“He [Gilfanov] played Jewish klezmer music in a band called Simha with his colleagues from the symphony orchestra. I wanted to play that music, too – it was so much fun. So when I came to Canada in 1998 [for a PhD in conducting at the Université de Montréal], I was looking for an opportunity and found it playing freilechs in the streets,” Ichmouratov says.
His start here as a street musician followed the route that many accomplished immigrant musicians must take before – or if – they are lucky enough to gain the recognition they are due.
He further enlarged his repertoire by studying old klezmer recordings and putting his own spin on original pieces, colouring them with classical influences and tinges of jazz, blues, contemporary and folk.
“One day during Havah Nagilah, a man walking by on Ste. Catherine Street asked me if I play klezmer and gave me the number of a band looking for a clarinetist. Mark Peetsma invited me to audition, they liked how I played and we decided to stick together,” he says.
The group recorded its first album in then-band member Henri Oppenheim’s home studio and promptly sold 200 CDs in two hours.
That 2001 CD impressed I Musici de Montréal conductor Yuli Turovsky, whose wife Eleanora was teaching violin and viola to Ichmouratov’s wife Elvira Misbakhova.
Misbakhova, who also has a busy classical career, joined Kleztory, playing with accordionist Melanie Bergeron, guitarist Dany Nicolas (who recently replaced Alain Legault), double bassist Peetsma and Ichmouratov on clarinet, bass clarinet and duclar (an Armenian woodwind).
Turovsky proposed an album with his I Musici de Montréal that became a huge hit for Chandos Records.
Ichmouratov still recalls the comment that his late mentor made when the album was issued: “That CD shouldn’t be sold at Archambault but in pharmacies as medicine for happiness.” Kleztory is now working on its fifth release.
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“We played 50 concerts with I Musici the following year because of that CD. Our career just took off. Six months later, we got a phone call from the Montreal Symphony Orchestra inviting us to play with them. It was a dream come true,” says Ichmouratov, who, after making the leap from the streets to Place des Arts, had Kleztory in concert with, among others, the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Nouvelle Génération, the Orchestre Métropolitain and Les Violins du Roy.
He composed two classical Fantasia pieces on klezmer themes, one a concerto with orchestra and the other for clarinet, piano and string quartet. Among his klezmer compositions are The Song of the Dead Sea and Gut Yontef for Klezmer Band and Symphony Orchestra Op. 31.
The upbeat band also began touring Canada and the United States, cracking the European and Asian touring markets after earning laurels at international klezmer festivals. “We’ve been in 15 countries so far,” Ichmouratov says.