Jazz pianist, arranger, composer, bandleader — the second half of every day. His music and his writing share one pulse: critics said his poems are built “by the logic of jazz.”
initiator, pianist strock-rosner.com ↗
The only ensemble worldwide reconstructing and performing the once-banned, “lost” music of Oskar Strock and Eddie Rosner — appearances include the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Kulturforum Wiesbaden and JazzHall Hamburg.
„…geht auf die unermüdlichen Bestrebungen von Dmitri Dragilew zurück, der seit vielen Jahren als Musiker, Autor und Forscher tätig ist.“ — Tatjana Strock, strock-rosner.com
leader, arrangements, own compositions strock-rosner.com ↗
A Berlin gem of the Eddie Rosner swing tradition — its repertoire includes compositions and songs written by Dragilew himself.
leader — Russian tango
Russian tango: Strock, Rosner, Vertinsky, Petersburski, Dunayevsky — “a journey into a world of love and lovelessness, suppressed longing and volcanic passion.”
leader
A swing formation — one of the lineups in which Dragilew brings the music of the 1930s and '40s to the stage.
Back at Latvian Radio he debuted as a singer-songwriter — one of his songs ran for ten years as the theme of the program Den za dnyom (Day after Day).
«Медленный свет» (Slow Light)
Radio is the third stage: volunteer and freelance contributor at Latvian Radio's Russian desk (1992–1995), then co-founder of Radio Akzent — Thuringia's first Russian-language FM program (first broadcast January 13, 2000; editor-in-chief of the Erfurt desk 2000–2005, coordinator of the Berlin group from 2011; a 2005 internship at Echo of Moscow). In 2017, the jazz radio series Shmalyaem Jazz! — from Tsfasman and Glenn Miller to Strock and Rosner.
Two books made Dragilew the reference on the history of Russian tango and Soviet jazz: Labyrinths of Russian Tango (2008) and the Rosner biography Shmalyaem Jazz, Kholera Yasna! (2011). In 2023 he represented the Strock & Rosner Society at the Riga conference marking Oskar Strock's 130th birthday; in 2024 his English-language article on both musicians' Berlin years appeared (Scripta Musica, vol. 22).
In 2015 the taz portrayed him as the man trying “to wrest Russian tango from oblivion”:
„Musikwissenschaftlich gesehen sind die Stilmittel von Petersburski regelrecht dämonisch“, erklärt der Tangoexperte Dmitri Dragilew. […] „Für Dragilew ist Strock der unumstrittene König des russischen Tango.“ […] „Dmitri Dragilew versucht, den russischen Tango dem Vergessen zu entreißen.“
taz am Wochenende, 8./9. August 2015 („Russischer Tango — Schiffbruch mit Musik“, taz.de/!5215795)
Appearances: Worms 2006 · Usedom 2013 · Lviv 2014 · Tangonale Berlin 2014