UCLA student aims to strike a chord for listeners through Balkan ensemble

Anna Kouchnerov walked with her grandfather on a cobblestone road in Ukraine, watching traders, peddlers and Gypsies and hearing a medley of music from the sides of the pathway.

The sound of the Gypsy Balkan bands on the roads she walked on as a child sparked her passion for Balkan music.

Kouchnerov, a fourth-year music performance student, has used her time studying classical violin at the Herb Alpert School of Music to continue the legacy of the Music and Dance of the Balkan Ensemble. The group, which consists of five musicians and about 25 vocalists, is dedicated to learning and performing music from Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Albania and other Southeast European countries.

By playing Balkan music, Kouchnerov said she is able to challenge herself musically and bring the culture and sound of her childhood Ukrainian cobblestone road to UCLA.

“Different kinds of music came to me just as much as the classical music training,” Kouchnerov said. “Over the years I kept studying in a classical sense but was always listening out for different kinds of music on the side.”

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Kouchnerov has played the violin since she was 5 years old, and now she studies with a classical focus. Her musical appreciation expanded to world music since playing genres from different cultures is a way for her to understand herself and understand others, Kouchnerov said.

Balkan music has existed in the world for centuries, and has been taught at UCLA since 1960. UCLA ethnomusicology professor Ivan Varimezov – who is one of Kouchnerov’s musical mentors – and his wife Tzevtanka Varimezova, first began directing the Balkan ensemble in 2001; while Varimezov instructs the musicians, Varimezova leads the women’s Balkan choir, Superdevoiche. The couple wanted to combine vocalists and instrumentalists into a single ensemble, one in which Kouchnerov has taken active leadership in.

The Balkan ensemble is a class that Varimezov and Varimezova lead together, named Ethnomusicology 161C: “Advanced World Music Performance Organizations: Music and Dance of Balkans.” Although the ensemble was originally created with a one-year contract, the course continues to still attract students like Kouchnerov each year, Varimezov said.

Kouchnerov has been taking Varimezov’s Balkan music class for the past four years, challenging herself with complicated rhythms and notes on her violin.

The genre has uneven meters, contrasting with the straight beats present in much of American pop music. Balkan rhythms give the music a compelling adrenaline rush when being played or listened to, as it is easy to lose oneself in the fast, complex melodies and tempos, Kouchnerov said.

At its most recent gig at the Fowler Museum last Wednesday, the Balkan ensemble performed a spread of traditional Balkan songs, including a piece Kouchnerov wrote herself. In one of the closing pieces, Kouchnerov couldn’t help but stop playing, jump out of her seat and dance to the folky Balkan tune.

“She is so into the music, and that comes from her understanding about the music – how you have to feel the music,” Varimezov said. “The music is more like that – personal.”

Kouchnerov has written her own pieces in the past, but it is not as common for her to perform them. Yet at Fowler Museum, she and the ensemble played her original composition, “Spirals,” for the first time. She wrote the piece spontaneously in a span of two days.

“It’s based on a Greek phrase,” Kouchnerov said. “Instead of just saying something like, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ they say ‘I ate the whole world looking for you,’ so it’s a cute little phrase that stuck with me while I was writing.”

Second-year ethnomusicology student Sam Robertson is also a member of the Balkan ensemble, having played the accordion for seven years. With an academic focus on world cultures, playing Balkan music has given him a creative way to showcase his interests alongside Kouchnerov.

“It’s a cool way to get a window into another culture because as you learn the music, you get to learn about the people behind the music too,” Robertson said. “It’s not just music – it’s also what surrounds it.”

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Although Kouchnerov will be graduating in spring, she plans to stay near campus and work with her professors next year to further her musical abilities and projects before applying to classical music graduate programs.

She hopes the time will also prepare her for future auditions at East Coast graduate schools, where she wants to continue pursuing classical music professionally and playing world music on the side.

“If something I do and love to that extent, if I can introduce that to more people, then it’s very, very worth it,” Kouchnerov said.