The London DJ Gabriel Prokofiev is the grandson of Sergei Prokofiev, and also a composer. At the Beethoven festival, he presented with “Beethoven9 Remix” is an electronic Interpretation of Beethoven’s ninth Symphony.
As Gabriel Prokofiev as a Teenager, founded in the late 1980s in Birmingham with a few mates in his first Band, a Disco-Punk band with the name “spectrum” to put it a nickname: “Olegavitsch” he wanted to hot with the artist name after the first name of his father. “My last name has bothered me is easy,” he admits today. “Everyone said: ‘Oh, look at that – the grandson of the great Sergei Prokofiev, dedicated to pop music!'”
Grandfather Sergei is considered to be one of the most important Russian composers of the 20th century. Century. Gabriel Prokofiev (whose family adopted the English spelling) wanted to be perceived “as an independent composer and then as a grandson of the composer.”
“SymFusion” in Bonn
To do this, it came about 20 years later: Prokofiev graduated from a music College, went to London, made a name for himself as a DJ, founded her own Label and a night club is not about “Nonclassical”. Only then, he began to write classical music in a style that is linked to the neoclassical tonal language of Sergei Prokofiev, but also electronic effects.
Between score and mixer: Gabriel Prokofiev
Between the worlds of electronic sounds and the classic, the 43-year-old three-times the father wants to see no contradiction: “We live in a time that is now shaped from a variety of influences, eras and styles at the same time.” Just recently he has been included in the city of Perm, Russia, a new Album with his classical works in cooperation with the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the best sound body of Russia. Including a concert for saxophone with orchestra accompaniment – and with the US-American Jazz-saxophonist Branford Marsalis as soloist.
Only a few days later, on 15. In September, he is as a DJ to be a guest at the beethovenfest in Bonn. With “SymFusion”, he presents a Remix of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, complemented by electronic and visual effects – a Fusion of Hearing and Seeing.
Burden of the family history
Of course you can, and don’t want to renounce Gabriel Prokofiev of his family history: “I identify myself entirely with the genes of my grandfather, his urge to create, and I think he’s much more talented – I have written no symphonies, only nine years of age as he is.”
Sergei Prokofiev with his wife Lina and their two sons, Svyatoslav and Oleg, the father of Gabriel Prokofiev
It is not a simple family story, accompanied by Gabriel Prokofiev. Sergei Prokofiev had two sons from his first marriage with the singer Carolina Codina. This was born as the daughter of a Catalan and a Russian in Madrid, performed under the stage name Lina Llubera, and is a model for “Princess Linette” in the Prokofiev Opera “The love for three oranges” (premiered 1921).
The children, Oleg and his brother, Svyatoslav, was born in Paris and had to accompany as a Teenager, her parents in their Emigration to Soviet Russia. In the strange new Land, they experienced a lot of Painful: in 1941 the father fell in love with the young interpreter, Mira Mendelssohn, and left the family. The mother was arrested as a hostile foreigner firm and spent eight years in the Gulag. In 1953, the father died.
It was only in the 1970s, the Prokofiev were able to leave the country in the West, you lived on, in France, Germany and the UK, where Gabriel 1975 – 22 years after the death of his grandfather – was born as the youngest of the grandchildren by Sergei Prokofiev. His mother is a British citizen, he doesn’t speak Russian, wants to learn it but on the occasion: “The culture of Russia interested me very much, especially the music. Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Gubaidulina, Prokofiev – this is my true mother Russia.”