Volatinsky Trio

BLACKTOWN Arts Centre will welcome back by popular demand, The Volatinsky Trio who will open the 2013 season of the Echo Music Series on February 2, 2013.


The trio plays original world music laced with the flavours of Russia and the Balkans on an exotic combination of instruments - cimbalom (Russian hammer dulcimer with 78 strings), cello, domra (Russian mandolin) and guitar.

Their concert on Saturday 2 February will commence at 3pm and kick off the 2013 Echo Music Series – a long running series featuring an array of unique and different performing artists in concert throughout the year.

Members of the Volatinsky Trio include:

Lucy Voronov from Minsk is one of the great players of cimbalom having won major folk instrument competitions in Russia and the former USSR.

Anatoli Torjinski from Odessa is an ARIA-award winning musician, renowned for his brilliant jazz/world-style cello playing and improvisations in groups including Double T, Monsieur Camembert and the Eddie Bronson Trio.

Stephen Lalor is Kiev-trained in Russian domra and guitar. When he is not playing with world music groups based in Sydney, Stephen works with Australian and overseas symphony orchestras as a mandolin specialist, appearing at major festivals as a mandolin/domra soloist. He has performed and/or recorded with artists including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bryn Terfel, Andy Irvine, Shen Yang, Taraf de Haidouks and The Stiff Gins.

Volatinsky Trio have played at some of Australia’s major World-Music Festivals, notably; The National Folk Festival and Fairbridge Festival (“a blistering set” – 2011 Fairbridge Program), plus Tanks (Cairns), Boite (Melbourne) & Camelot (Sydney). More recently they have headlined the Canberra Folk Festival, Montreal Music Festival, and will be performing in Adelaide at the Womadelaide Festival.
- Western Sydney Bulletin Access

The Volatinsky Trio makes your Breakfast Jam with traditional Balkan sounds.
The energetic cimbalom playing of Lucy Voronov evokes images of Belarus and the Ukraine. For today's Jam they perform two works written by guitar and domra player Stephen Lalor.

The Volatinsky Trio are heading to South Australia for their debut appearance at Womadelaide

and next weekend they're the opening act at the Blue Mountains Music Festival. - ABC Classis FM

There is not another outfit in Australia quite like the Volatinsky Trio. Apart from the fact that their music is a vibrant mix of Russian and Balkans-laced originals and traditional pieces, the group’s members – all products of the renowned Soviet folk and classical music education system – play an exotic combination of instruments.

As one of the world’s leading exponents of cimbalom, Belarusian Lucy Voronov, a graduate of Minsk Conservatorium, tends to grab the limelight in live performances. Wielding wooden hammers, her hands fly over the dulcimer-like instrument’s 78 strings at breakneck speed and with a passion associated with the best gypsy players.

Ukrainian Anatoli Torjinski’s mellow cello offsets the flurry of notes that Voronov generates to a nicety. This graduate of the Odessa Conservatorium of Music has become one of the most in-demand cellists in Australia, where he also performs with Monsieur Camembert, Libertango Trio and similarly well-credentialed groups. Torjinski is also admired for the imagination of his playing.

The Volatinsky Trio’s Australian leader, Stephen Lalor, is a fleet-fingered whiz on Russian mandolin (domra), an instrument he studied at Kiev’s Tchaikovsky Conservatorium. Also a skilled guitarist, composer and arranger, he straddles the folk and classical worlds, performing with the Sydney Symphony, Opera Australia and orchestras in China and South-East Asia and writing for everything from string quartets to mandolin groups.

The paths of these three virtuoso musicians converged in Sydney, where they would often find themselves performing together as accompanists for visiting Russian, Ukrainian and Balkan players. “We knew each other through performing at the same world music concerts and events in different groups,” confirms Lalor. “Lucy and Anatoli were playing in some Russian things and they asked me along a couple of times, and it worked so well we decided to take it further.”

Their performance debut under the Volatinsky Trio moniker (that’s a combination of their surnames), came a couple of years ago when the Australian Institute of Music and NSW Art Gallery asked Lalor to put together a group for some concerts. He jumped at the chance of roping in Voronov and Torjinski, and the Trio was officially born. Suffice to say, they haven’t looked back.

“I think the reason we work so well together is that we all have common musical background and really rigorous technical instrumental training,” Lalor opines.

In tandem, the Trio’s instruments create what the leader terms as “a special sound universe.” He expands, “The plucked steel strings of cimbalom, guitar and domra are complemented by the bowed cello. That much of the music derives its melodies and feels from the incredibly rich Balkan and Russian music traditions, give it a special flavour.”

Lalor’s evocative compositions, featured on the Trio’s debut album Troika, draw on traditional influences. Part of ‘Bukovina Odyssey’, for example, adroitly utilises a Moldavian standard, while ‘Poloninu’ unites an ancient fiddle tune and a traditional Ukrainian song. The composer is also not averse to blending genres in his instrumental pieces. ‘Vostochny-Zapednie’, for instance, makes a smooth stylistic east to west/Appalachian to East European transition. He has also written a tribute to the French Bal Musette style, entitled ‘Manouche Waltz’.

The Trio is currently working on material for a new CD. “It will be centered around pieces I’ve written for a musical based on the Russian classic 20th century novel The Master & Margarita,” Lalor reports. The mandolinist/guitarist road-tested some of his new works during concerts in Moscow and St Petersburg last year, and with the Trio at a Sydney gig earlier this year. “The response to this was great, so we’re just working up enough of them plus other material for a new album and to play at WOMADelaide.”

Thus far, the Volatinsky Trio has performed at the National, Woodford and Fairbridge folk festivals. Last September they opened the Sydney Chamber Music Festival at Manly. They’re greatly looking forward to adding WOMADelaide to their rapidly-expanding CV. “We regard it as probably the major festival in Australia, and the perfect vehicle for what we do,” Stephen Lalor enthuses.

The Volatinsky Trio have given consideration to the notion of touring Russia and Ukraine but suggest dealing with the mindset, laws and business methods that exist behind the former Iron Curtain would present a stern challenge, even for Russian-speakers!

The Volatinsky Trio performs at WOMADelaide (March 8-11) and the Blue Mountains Folk Festival (March 15-17). Troika is available through Planet.

- Rythms

There is not another outfit in Australia quite like the Volatinsky Trio. Apart from the fact that their music is a vibrant mix of Russian and Balkans-laced originals and traditional pieces, the group’s members – all products of the renowned Soviet folk and classical music education system – play an exotic combination of instruments.

As one of the world’s leading exponents of cimbalom, Belarusian Lucy Voronov, a graduate of Minsk Conservatorium, tends to grab the limelight in live performances. Wielding wooden hammers, her hands fly over the dulcimer-like instrument’s 78 strings at breakneck speed and with a passion associated with the best gypsy players.

Ukrainian Anatoli Torjinski’s mellow cello offsets the flurry of notes that Voronov generates to a nicety. This graduate of the Odessa Conservatorium of Music has become one of the most in-demand cellists in Australia, where he also performs with Monsieur Camembert, Libertango Trio and similarly well-credentialed groups. Torjinski is also admired for the imagination of his playing.

The Volatinsky Trio’s Australian leader, Stephen Lalor, is a fleet-fingered whiz on Russian mandolin (domra), an instrument he studied at Kiev’s Tchaikovsky Conservatorium. Also a skilled guitarist, composer and arranger, he straddles the folk and classical worlds, performing with the Sydney Symphony, Opera Australia and orchestras in China and South-East Asia and writing for everything from string quartets to mandolin groups.

The paths of these three virtuoso musicians converged in Sydney, where they would often find themselves performing together as accompanists for visiting Russian, Ukrainian and Balkan players. “We knew each other through performing at the same world music concerts and events in different groups,” confirms Lalor. “Lucy and Anatoli were playing in some Russian things and they asked me along a couple of times, and it worked so well we decided to take it further.”

Their performance debut under the Volatinsky Trio moniker (that’s a combination of their surnames), came a couple of years ago when the Australian Institute of Music and NSW Art Gallery asked Lalor to put together a group for some concerts. He jumped at the chance of roping in Voronov and Torjinski, and the Trio was officially born. Suffice to say, they haven’t looked back.

“I think the reason we work so well together is that we all have common musical background and really rigorous technical instrumental training,” Lalor opines.

In tandem, the Trio’s instruments create what the leader terms as “a special sound universe.” He expands, “The plucked steel strings of cimbalom, guitar and domra are complemented by the bowed cello. That much of the music derives its melodies and feels from the incredibly rich Balkan and Russian music traditions, give it a special flavour.”

Lalor’s evocative compositions, featured on the Trio’s debut album Troika, draw on traditional influences. Part of ‘Bukovina Odyssey’, for example, adroitly utilises a Moldavian standard, while ‘Poloninu’ unites an ancient fiddle tune and a traditional Ukrainian song. The composer is also not averse to blending genres in his instrumental pieces. ‘Vostochny-Zapednie’, for instance, makes a smooth stylistic east to west/Appalachian to East European transition. He has also written a tribute to the French Bal Musette style, entitled ‘Manouche Waltz’.

The Trio is currently working on material for a new CD. “It will be centered around pieces I’ve written for a musical based on the Russian classic 20th century novel The Master & Margarita,” Lalor reports. The mandolinist/guitarist road-tested some of his new works during concerts in Moscow and St Petersburg last year, and with the Trio at a Sydney gig earlier this year. “The response to this was great, so we’re just working up enough of them plus other material for a new album and to play at WOMADelaide.”

Thus far, the Volatinsky Trio has performed at the National, Woodford and Fairbridge folk festivals. Last September they opened the Sydney Chamber Music Festival at Manly. They’re greatly looking forward to adding WOMADelaide to their rapidly-expanding CV. “We regard it as probably the major festival in Australia, and the perfect vehicle for what we do,” Stephen Lalor enthuses.

The Volatinsky Trio have given consideration to the notion of touring Russia and Ukraine but suggest dealing with the mindset, laws and business methods that exist behind the former Iron Curtain would present a stern challenge, even for Russian-speakers!

The Volatinsky Trio performs at WOMADelaide (March 8-11) and the Blue Mountains Folk Festival (March 15-17). Troika is available through Planet.

- Rythms