Julia Perminova: The Way to Her Star

Originally born in the United States, jazz has become a language that people speak all over the world. For Julia Perminova, a pianist and composer from the Siberian city of Tyumen, now living in Basel, Switzerland, jazz is a native language. Although her music talent was natural, her hard work and true passion have made her the artist she is. In 2021, she was selected from a large pool of jazz musicians and accepted into the prestigious international program Focusyear Band. She has released four albums and has signed with Dot Time Records for the release of her fifth album. The way to her star has been full of surprises.

How It Has Started

At the age of four, Perminova figured out on her own how to play some melodies on the recorder that she heard around her. Her parents noticed her talent and bought an upright piano. They brought her to a local music school when she was five where she started taking piano lessons.

By the age of fifteen, Perminova had finished music school but felt a bit tired of classical music. She was interested in pop music and music production, so she applied to the sound engineering program at the Tyumen College of Arts. To her disappointment, she was not accepted into that program, yet her piano playing was well-noticed. She was recommended to enter the pop and jazz program. At that time, she did not know anything about jazz, but she eagerly started exploring new territories.

"It was not my decision. Some people decided for me. This is so crazy. Then I started studying. I was lucky that I had many friends, jazz musicians, who helped me a lot."

Perminova learned jazz mostly from recordings. She listened to, transcribed, and analyzed different albums. One of her favorites was the DVD concert of Diana Krall, Live in Paris (Verve Music Group, 2002). It inspired her, so she decided to continue her jazz path.

Playing with friends helped Perminova to grow as a jazz pianist. For her first paid music gig, she subbed for her piano professor, Viktor Novakauskas, in a local band, Crooning Jazz. Later, she started playing in a duet with a guitar professor, Anton Deryagin. Music became her full-time occupation.

"I was always obsessed with music. The only other things that I could do, if not jazz, would be playing classical music or being a sound engineer. There was a moment in my life when I was not sure about that. Then, I realized that was not for me. I would rather play jazz than wrap some cables. I have always been curious about mixing though. I watch some tutorials because I create backing tracks for singers and write arrangements."

Yekaterinburg and Moscow

In 2011, Perminova moved to Yekaterinburg and lived there for two years. She was enrolled at the Ural State Pedagogical University and took classical piano lessons there because there was no jazz department. Yet she played jazz concerts with various groups, and that helped her to continue growing professionally.

In 2013, Perminova moved to Moscow. She recalls a story that pushed her to move there. Igor Bril, a pianist from Moscow who teaches at Gnessin's Academy, was supposed to perform with a jazz band at the local theater in Yekaterinburg. Victor Shenderovich, an actor and publicist, had a show where the band played as a background. Bril had a heart attack, right on the day of this performance. The drummer from the band asked if any local pianist was available to sub. It was only a couple of hours before the concert, yet Perminova agreed to play and saved the show.

"That was something I had not done before. I was a bit shocked, but it ended up being a nice experience to play with those musicians. We played this concert, and two saxophonists who were playing there, sons of Igor Bril, liked my playing and suggested that I move to Moscow."

Perminova says that Bril's sons promised to tell their father about her and recommended her to apply to Gnessin's Academy to study with Bril. Perminova went to Moscow to pass the auditions, yet she never mentioned to Brill that it was she who subbed for him at the performance. She successfully passed the entrance exams and was accepted into the program.

"I was sure that he knew me. But then it turned out that he did not. He did not know that I was the person who subbed for him. Yet, he still admitted me to the jazz department. I got my place because of my playing. Then I lived in Moscow for four years."

Moving to Europe

During the last year of her bachelor's degree, Perminova started thinking about moving to Europe. She liked Europe but she did not know yet where she would want to move to. She visited a friend in Germany and thought that it is a great place to live. Then, a band from Berlin came to play a concert in Moscow. Perminova went to their concert, and they played together at the jam session. One of the band members was studying at the Jazz Institute in Berlin and told Perminova about the program.

"The education there is free, and I did not know that. Or maybe I did not pay attention. I thought this was a great idea, so I applied. They invited me to the audition. I auditioned and then a bit later I was accepted to this Jazz Institute."

The education at the Jazz Institute is in English, which was helpful because Perminova did not speak German at the moment of her application. The program she enrolled in is called European Jazz Master. The students can choose to study in different European countries and cities. Perminova chose to start in Berlin. Then, she moved to Amsterdam, and after that, to Paris. Because of the pandemic, she got an opportunity to take an additional semester in Germany, so she had two semesters in Berlin at the end of her program.

"It was such a great experience to travel around those countries, not just live in one country. I had a lot of hard situations, too. Sometimes, I was running out of money, but my friends helped me. When I did not have a place to stay, my friends invited me to live in their house for two weeks. You have to stay in one country only for five months, not even for half a year, and then you have to move to another country. I had some problems but I have always solved them somehow."

Perminova found that the life of a jazz musician in Europe is more relaxed than it was for her in Moscow. In Moscow, she had to work a lot to make a living and she barely had time to practice. In Europe, she finally got the practice time she was longing for. She also noticed that all the facilities at the colleges in Europe were much better than in Gnessin's Academy.

"You have so much space and time to have jam sessions with students. We would never do that in Moscow. People just did not play together, only for gigs. In Europe, we would have as many rehearsals as we wanted."

Perminova says that the audience in Europe is more into jazz compared to Moscow. She also notes that the venues in Europe do great advertising, which is not the case in Moscow. She does not have to worry at all about promotion, and she knows that people always come to her jazz events.

Recording projects

Perminova has done various recording projects, from solo to a five-piece band. The first project she did, Luminescence (Butman Music, 2017), was produced by her with Ignat Kravtsov , a drummer, and performed with his band, Amber Sept. They met each other in Yekaterinburg and started playing together when Perminova moved to Moscow. They agreed to split the expenses 50/50 since they were the two composers in the project. They had some great musicians from Moscow: Anton Revnyuk on bass, Andrey Krasilnikov on saxophone and Alexandr Papiy on guitar.

"I remember that we rehearsed a lot. Our approaches with Ignat [Kravtsov] are different. I had my opinion, and he had the opposite. We did not argue, but sometimes I felt like this was not what I wanted. We recorded at three different studios in Moscow. Some musicians were not happy with their solos, so we did like five takes of each song, and we were exhausted. I realized that playing with many musicians in the band is complicated. But that was a great experience for me. I am happy, the recording is great, and we had a lot of positive feedback."

After the release with Amber Sept, Perminova decided to put together her trio. She found completely different musicians, Alexandr Kulkov on drums and Sergey Korchagin on bass. Perminova had a great time with this trio and remembers it was a terrific experience to record with them an album of her original compositions, Revival (Butman Music, 2018).

"They [Kulikov and Korchagin] are great musicians and also nice people. I did not have any conflicts with them. They are friendly, and they would do anything that I would tell them. They also suggested ideas to me, so we felt some chemistry, which is so important. We recorded my album basically in one day because we knew all the music before and we played some concerts together."

After Revival, Perminova did two solo albums, Imagination (Self-published, 2021) and Way to My Star (Self-published, 2022). She recalls those projects were challenging because it was just her playing solo, yet they allowed her not to worry about rehearsals with other musicians. Before doing the first solo album, she made solo piano videos and posted them on her social media account.

"I started playing some simple melodies. It was improvisational stuff. I noticed that many people liked it, and I got a lot of comments about recording an album. I had so many pieces that I decided it was time to record. My first solo album was recorded in Amsterdam when I lived there, at the studio of the conservatory. I also made music sheets because I knew that some people were interested in the piano book."

The idea for another piano solo album, Way to My Star, came from Perminova's younger sister, Liza. She is a painter who is interested in the cosmos and images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Liza Perminova drew cosmic pictures and Julia Perminova wrote music inspired by the paintings. One of her fans suggested recording the album at his studio for free, and that is how the project came together. Later, Perminova added sound effects on the top of the piano in some compositions. She wanted to recreate the feel of flying in space. The CD is accompanied by paintings that amplify the impression of the music.

In February 2022, Perminova recorded Freedom, an album of her original compositions to be released with the label Dot Time Records. The album was recorded in Germany and featured quite an international team of musicians: Dima Bondarev (trumpet, Ukraine), Miguel Valente (alto saxophone, Portugal), Luis Possolo (drums, Portugal) and Josef Zeimetz (bass, Germany).

The Focusyear Band

In 2021—2022, Perminova was participating as a member of the program Focusyear Band in Basel, Switzerland. This program puts together an ensemble of musicians from all over the world. The ensemble is coached by some of the greatest jazz musicians, including Aaron Parks, Miguel Zenon, Ingrid Jensen, Django Bates, Linda May Han Oh, Lionel Loueke, Marilyn Mazur and others. The band members receive a scholarship that covers tuition and living expenses for a year.

Perminova says that all the mentors were different in their approaches to teaching, which allowed the participants to get a broader perspective. Some coaches focused more on leading the discussion, while others spent the most time playing with the members of the band. Some brought in their original music, while others worked on the band members' compositions.

"There were a lot of great people and all of them had different personalities. Usually, you listen to their music but you do not know how they are personally. A highlight for me was working with Aaron Parks. He is such a sweet guy. I love his music and his approach to working with the band."

Among the challenges of participating in the program, Perminova mentions that all the applicants are typically selected from various backgrounds. While usually, one can choose musicians to play with based on their interests, in the Focusyear program, one has to stick with the selected participants for a year, no matter how far apart their interests are. That means that one musician might focus solely on mainstream jazz, while another on free jazz. Despite all the differences, they are supposed to learn how to play together and develop styles that they are less familiar with.

Also, a big challenge for Perminova was having another pianist in the band, Yvonne Rogers. At the beginning of the program, they were both frustrated because all of a sudden they had to figure out how to deal with that. One solution is to use different timbres and to switch between the piano and some other keyboard instruments, such as Rhodes, electric organ, or synths. But on top of that, they needed to listen to each other carefully and not step on each other's toes.

"She [Yvonne Rogers] is a pianist from the US. She is great and she listens a lot. Day by day, we learned how to play together and we started to open our ears more and listen to every chord that we play. If she plays this register, then I have to switch to another register to play music together, not to be selfish."

Perminova says that several months into the Focusyear program, the problems were solved, and all the musicians in the band became close friends. They figured out how everybody sounds and how to accompany each other. Their differences are not as distinctive anymore.

"The most important thing is to serve the music. The musicians who are playing with you are important, too. So, you have to make them feel good."

For Perminova, the most memorable thing in the Focusyear was the trip to Boston and New York. The participants went to Berklee College and got a chance to play with Joe Lovano who teaches there. They also met Danilo Pérez, a great pianist and the director of the program, and they performed with the bassist John Patitucci.

After finishing the Focusyear, Perminova was accepted in her second master's program at the Jazzcampus in Basel. While her first master's in Berlin was mostly focused on performance, this program is focused on jazz composition. She aims to study arranging for a large band and add that to her artist's toolbox. She keeps searching for the way to her star.

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