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Today, there is a tendency to create works at the intersection of arts. So unusual projects appear, and the authors do not limit themselves. This is the artistic and musical story "Knight & Wolf", told by three men from Nizhny Novgorod. The core of the project is musical compositions. They are complemented by an art exhibition and a poem that help to see the melodies. Now we are telling you about idea of creating a project and what the authors needed to implement.

The lines in the epigraph belong to the artist, designer and restorer Alexander Gennadievich Denisov, who dedicated his life to art. One of his important works so far has become the artistic and musical project «Knight & Wolf», created with his son Ilya. Alexander created the artistic and poetic part of the project, Ilya created the musical part. And was released a clip «Knight & Night» for one of the project's compositions.

Ilya's father, Alexander Gennadievich, was working in Moscow for more than ten years. He restored urban buildings, designed interior of apartments, houses and public spaces, collaborated with architects and artists. His paintings were exhibited in Europe until the 2000s. During this time, the communication of the father and son practically came to naught. In 2011, Alexander Gennadievich returned to his hometown, Dzerzhinsk. Ilya offered his father to organize exhibitions together to find new common ground, and gradually their «collaboration» became the idea of creating the project «Knight & Wolf».

The main part of the project is a music album, which Ilya had been creating from the end of 2016 to the end of 2017. The first part consists of early works, and one of them was written by the composer for several years. The album is the result of the teamwork of Ilya with sound engineer and arranger Alexis Tsarkov.

The paintings, created by Alexander Gennadievich, complement the composition with the images that appear in each work. All canvases are filled with a certain symbolism, so that the viewer can see himself through them in different roles. When creating, the artist was inspired by the aesthetics of Tarot cards. It can be noticed by looking through the paintings. The poetic part was conceived as a wreath of sonnets in the spirit of the «Iliad» and «Odyssey» of Homer. Carried away by the plot, Alexander eventually created a full-fledged poem with a prologue and epilogue, explaining both the illustrations and the compositions.

Compositions, canvases and sonnets are telling us about the life path of a man, enclosed in the image of the Knight. Ilya and his father in part reflected in the actions of the protagonist their life experience. This is a story about whether you can become happy if you follow a dream, and what is the nature of the dream. There were often questions who the Wolf is and what it represents. "Here, each listener must decide for himself what he sees in this image," Ilya notes.

When creating the project, Ilya was inspired by the image of the main character, the Knight, in the short films KIN Fables of the Canadian brothers-directors Seb and Ben McKinnon.

The debut album included 15 tracks. They have no words, but they are similar to songs: you can hear musical repeats that correspond to verses and choruses. Ilya says, that the chosen genre is at the junction of modern and classical music. Compositions are synthesized on a computer and created according to academic rules. The work "Knight & Night" is the single with the video clip.

Initially, Ilya and his father wanted to make a short film. When they started working on the script, Alexander Gennadievich got sick, and the team had to give up planned shooting format. Nevertheless, it was decided to shoot a clip that would show what was happening in the poem. The team found costumes and also created the necessary props.
In the story of the clip, the main character sees a dream where he goes through what he has to do in the story of the main work.

There are no words in the video, but the composition reflects the difficult moment in life that has come for Ilya. The problem on the set for the whole group was that they had neither the experience nor the means to create work in video format. But thanks to Alexis Tsarkov and his friends, the work was nevertheless completed.

Our project is partly about not having to compete with anything. Each project is unique. To compete is to compare with something. There was a moment when I stopped making music, because I was often told to look at a particular musician, pointing to their professionalism. My goal is to make the project out of competition. The only thing that matters to me is the opinion of important people, some authors and personalities whose activities are like-minded to me.

I was also interested to know what the creators of KIN Fables think about my project, since their works are a source of my inspiration. My friends-translators helped me compose a letter and after a while Sebastian answered me and left a very warm review about «Knight & Wolf».

Now my work is moving in a new direction, and I hope that my compositions will find a response in the soul of everyone who listened to them», Ilya Denisov commented.

In 2015, Ilya met sound engineer and arranger Alexis Tsarkov, who played an important role in the development of the project. Then Ilya Denisov played his works in the cafe "Dial" for his friends. That same evening, Alexis appeared there and later helped Ilya with the creation of the music album and video. Here are his memories:

«It all started as an arrangement order, that is, for a long time I was just a performer. After some time, I began to propose ideas, we were discussing them with Ilya and in one form or another brought them into the project. At one point, I realized that I was giving the project a tremendous amount of time and effort, influencing its development not only in the musical part, but also in creating the overall picture, history. This is my first work of this magnitude and, like, after finishing working on the arrangement, I looked at my own compositions differently.

My musical tastes have changed. When we worked on the music video, my debut happened as a co-writer and director. So I discovered new opportunities. Having generated such an amount of material, we learned a lot, but forced the project to demand more from us. So much content can not be left without proper design, we needed a site. If there are sonnets, then why not voice them? This requires a new interpretation of music. Why not translate the project into English? And still there are pictures, it would be nice to arrange an exhibition and play several compositions on it. And also an orchestra ... In general, when the project was completed, we all exhaled together and smiled tiredly.

For me, this project is something grandiose. Perhaps the best and most significant work in which I was lucky to take part not only as a performer, but also as a co-author. This is a monument to the modest opportunities that we had, to the victims that we made sometimes, for the sake of a seemingly innocuous dream to tell our story. The irony is that this story is about the story of choosing a path in life, pursuing happiness and whether it can be found if you follow your dreams. Sometimes it's funny to watch how this story did not teach us anything while working on it, and there are paths and goals only in the eye of the viewers».