The now-Los Angeles-based 32-year-old composer was born in Moscow and, despite her Jewish genes, says there was not too much in the way of religion or heritage around in her formative years.
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\u201cAlthough I was born Jewish, I was raised in a non-religious family and therefore working on Kaddish felt like rediscovering my origins and going back to my roots,\u201d she notes.
Kaddish was given a glittering airing at the prestigious Vivacello, the International Cello Festival at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, last November, with the support of the Genesis Philanthropy Group. The 11-minute work featured Drubich\u2019s husband, Evgeny Tonkha, on cello, supported by Tibetan singing bowl, timpani and strings.
Drubich\u2019s own hands-on introduction into the mystical and magical world of music took place almost a quarter of a century ago, when she began taking piano lessons at the age of eight. She studied under celebrated Georgian pianist Eliso Virssaladze at the Moscow Chopin Music College from 1998 to 2002, before spending six years at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, earning bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in the process, under the aegis of Professor Franz Massinger.
Despite making good progress as a performing musician, a few years down the line Drubich opted for a change of professional tack.
\u201cI decided that I would be happier composing music rather than playing at recitals,\u201d she explains. The career move was prompted by a realization that were quite a few talented fish in the sea around her, and she didn\u2019t particularly fancy swimming upstream for the rest of her working life.
\u201cI was in a very prestigious competition which went on for something like a week. Every day there would be pianists playing from morning until the evening,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI played on the first day and, at some stage during the week, I decided I should probably go and listen to some of the other people in the competition.\u201d
It was something of a rude wakeup call.
\u201cThe order of the pianists was alphabetic and I saw that there were lots of Korean pianists whose last name was Kim. I decided there were too many pianists out there, and it was really hard to play so well.\u201d
The keyboard\u2019s loss is our listening pleasure\u2019s gain.
Drubich had a pretty smooth entry into the world of composition, helped somewhat by an important family connection.
\u201cThere is a very famous Russian composer called Isaak Schwartz \u2013 he wrote the music for maybe 100 movies. My father [Sergey Solovyov] is a filmmaker and they were friends, and they worked together. At some point I decided I would like to have some lessons with him. I used to go to his country house near St. Petersburg and spend the summer with him, talking about music \u2013 the symphonies of Brahms and Bruckner \u2013 and looking at the scores.\u201d
That was an excellent kickstarter to Drubich\u2019s writing career, which she followed up with formal studies in Germany. She eventually made it over to the States.
\u201cI went to a festival in Aspen [Colorado],\u201d she says. In fact, Drubich was one of a select group of just five young composers, chosen from around the world, to spend a month in Aspen studying and composing with major Hollywood composers Jeff Rona, David Newman and Jack Smalley.
Besides gaining from the Tinsel Town professionals\u2019 experience and expertise, Drubich also received some career pointers.
\u201cI met composers from Los Angeles and they said I should go there, because that is where the industry is based.\u201d
At the time, Solovyov was working on a new Russian big-screen adaptation of Tolstoy classic novel Anna Karenina and needed a helping hand with the score.
\u201cMy father heard me playing some stuff on the piano and asked what it was. I was just improvising something. He asked me to come over to the studio and said he\u2019d show me the video [of the movie] and that maybe I could improvise something for the movie. It was a lot of fun. Then he asked me to write something for a waltz scene.\u201d
Drubich\u2019s soundtrack-writing career was duly up and running, and she has also put together a score for a six-hour documentary about Russian Jewry, which was also supported by Genesis. She finds time to create works for concert settings too. She says the two fields are very different.
\u201cWriting music for concerts is healthier,\u201d she notes. \u201cIt is challenging but you know, sometimes the story of a movie can be bad.
It\u2019s kind of interesting because you can write amazing music for a bad movie, and nobody will care about the music. But if you write music for a great movie people will say the music is amazing, It\u2019s a kind of win-win situation,\u201d she laughs. \u201cWith concert music you\u2019re very naked. It\u2019s more challenging. It takes so much longer to write a concert piece.\u201d
Kaddish came about following a sad personal event.
\u201cThe mother of my husband died and, one night, I woke up and just realized I was going to write Kaddish,\u201d Drubich recalls.
\u201cBecause of my husband it was obvious that the piece was going to be for a solo cello and orchestra. It doesn\u2019t follow the text of the prayer, it is a concert piece.\u201d
Even so, the religious undertones to the work are unmistakable.
\u201cIt has Jewish motifs. You could say it is Jewish music but it is actually concert music.\u201d
It is an evocative work which conveys high emotion, as well as Drubich\u2019s steadfast connection with her rediscovered roots.
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