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Brian Peterkin-Vertanesian

About Me

My House Concert Story

My friend Chuck Redd was going to be playing drums for Valery Ponomarev -- "the Messenger from Russia" -- at a beautiful house concert venue that my wife and I had not been to. Chuck got us on the guest list. The couple hosting the event were amazing and soon became very good friends. Valery was still amazing as a player, and he enthralled us with his playing and storytelling. In this intimate setting, the experience of hearing pieces of the story that led him from secretly listening to jazz recordings in Soviet Russia to becoming one of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers was the lasting memory. I snatched up an autographed copy of his book, On the Flip Side of Sound, to get the full story. His comical in-person style, even when telling stories of dismay, came through in the writing and the memory of him in that living room made reading the book like listening to an audio book.