Neselovskyi continued his studies at the Thelonious Monk Institute for Jazz Performance, working with mentors like Terence Blanchard and Herbie Hancock. "I remember, I had a duo concert with Esperanza Spalding at the Sony Center in New York," he says, "and at the reception, that was the first time that people were saying: 'So, you're from Ukraine.' I started to realize that Ukraine is becoming something more than just this obscure post-Soviet Republic, you know? And then I started coming to Ukraine regularly, and I saw that my friends were experiencing something very new - this feeling that democracy means having something to say about the way the country is going." Neselovskyi was paying close attention from afar, and he noticed that others were, too. When I caught the band at Birdland the following year, I took note of Neselovskyi's delicate touch at the piano, along with his deft hand as an arranger.Īt the time, Ukraine was in the midst of a groundswell of democratic protests known as the Orange Revolution. This quintet released a 2005 album, Next Generation, under Burton's name. Even against that imposing yardstick, he says, Neselovskyi stood out: "He's able to drift back and forth between classical and jazz more seamlessly than anyone I have heard before."īurton formed a group around the considerable talents of Neselovskyi and several other Berklee students at the time: guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Luques Curtis and drummer James Williams. Burton, a former child prodigy himself, came up in the 1960s alongside future piano titans Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett.
His synthesis of those two elements, at that stage in his development, instantly caught the ear of Gary Burton, an illustrious vibraphonist who was Berklee's Dean of Curriculum at the time. By the time he arrived at Berklee, he was as serious about jazz improvisation as he was about classical composition. As he settled into life in the west, Neselovskyi began to understand the freedoms, both civic and creative, that he had never known.
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