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Blending ancient Kostroma folk songs with free jazz, cinematic soundscapes, and electronic textures, Gralitsa defies easy categorization. Since forming in 2014, the ensemble has turned improvisation into their guiding principle, creating music that is alive, unpredictable, and deeply rooted in tradition. With their new album Gralitsa II, the group embraces raw energy, recording in single takes to preserve the beauty of imperfection. From tender lullabies to bold sonic experiments, Gralitsa continues to expand the boundaries of folk music while staying true to its living spirit. Today, I’m speaking with Serge Tsymlyakov — composer, arranger, and producer of Gralitsa.

 

Daryana: Your new single “Lullaby” sounds both tender and bold. Why did you choose this particular composition as the single before the album release?

Serge: This is a new step in creation — a small line or conclusion that grew into the next stage of our artistic movement.

It’s also, on our part, a more electronically expressed work, refined and completed under very difficult circumstances for us at that time. Despite them, we managed to prove our own capabilities to ourselves!

So this is a kind of victory over circumstances, where music literally pulled us out into the light.

 

How does “Lullaby” differ from the other tracks — what makes it the “quintessence” of your sound today?

Serge: This composition is the dawn of all sorts of philosophical and musical approaches and styles, united by a common love for both tradition (folk, in the broad sense) and the world of musical images, sounds, and feelings...

 

 

The group Gralitsa was founded back in 2014. What inspired the creation of the project, and what was its original purpose?

Serge: More precisely, it was two projects that existed in parallel for a time: Living Triangles and the folk group Gralitsa. Then came the idea to unite them and invite the unique horn-player and musician Gennady Kiselyov, which resulted in the creation of the Gralitsa project. Its goal was not only to promote contemporary folk art but also to experiment live with musical material.

 

Who makes up the current core of Gralitsa, and how does the diverse musical background of the members shape the ensemble’s sound?

Today, the steady format of Gralitsa is releasing albums, performing in various lineups (both folkloric and authorial interpretations of musical material), as well as numerous musical experiments.

 

Your roots are in the Kostroma region, where you continue to preserve and perform authentic folk songs. How important is this local connection to your creative process?

Yes, the connection with Kostroma folk songs is fundamental in our work, because it serves as a constant source of inspiration and inner support for us — a careful, respectful, and sensitive approach to the material, weaving it into the contemporary pulse of time. This music cannot disappear or fade away, because it truly is a living spring of thought, feeling, and philosophy of our people and our land, endowed with a very delicate musical beauty.

 

Gralitsa is both a live ensemble and a modern studio project. How do these two sides — folkloric fieldwork and concert performances on one hand, and studio experiments on the other — interact?

Serge: Our project Gralitsa — both a live ensemble and a studio project — indeed existed this way for some time, and in a very organic way, enriching one another. But today it has undergone changes: our activity has shifted more into the field of studio work, since an important stage has become the current focus on studio arrangement and realization of the project. One could say that now our ongoing musical improvisation has found new life in the albums released by our studio Ukha.

 

What themes or concepts will be explored in the new album, and how does it expand the scope of your previous work?

Serge: The expansion of our work lies mainly in the further refinement of our experimental approach and the unexpected use of musical instruments, in the search for new sounds, their relationships, and interactions, in using not only folk texts but also poems by classical poets — whose meanings can be more fully revealed in the realities of our day. We also want to emphasize their relevance and significance today. And it’s important for us, through our music, to invite everyone to take part in the shared creation of unusual and magical musical images, which we can all bring to life within ourselves.

 

Folk-electronic projects in Russia are gaining more and more recognition. In your opinion, what makes Gralitsa unique compared to other groups in this field?

Serge: All musical collectives are unique, each in its own way, and every listener finds something personal in them. What matters here is not only the final result but also the process itself, because in our group it is always alive. We don’t have identical tunes performed unchanged — each one is sung with a different degree of improvisation, and that’s our main condition, not forced but natural, always present in our collective. One could say that we have no repeating intonations: it’s a whole world of unusual sound relationships born right in the moment, without any rules! Sometimes we ourselves don’t know where this almost self-emerging musical path might lead us.

This, by the way, is also the answer to how such different musical genres can be combined: perhaps one could say that we give birth to them, and they intertwine with each other of their own accord — but still with our participation.

 

How do you manage to combine traditional elements — horn, gusli, authentic singing — with influences of free jazz, cinematic soundscapes, and electroacoustics?

Serge: Yes, that sounds about right... We really are restless explorers, and within us probably lives a benevolent spirit of adventurism, pushing us toward constant searching and discovery. Perhaps the mission can only be one — the moment of creation, the making of an image of something genuine and elevated, something that will live not only in our hearts but also in the hearts of our listeners.

 

And how many albums do you have so far, and where can we listen to them?

Serge: All the albums are collected at https://gralitsa.bandcamp.com/ where they can currently be downloaded for free, and also at https://vk.com/gralitsafolk.

In total, we have 5 albums. Some of them are also available on Spotify, iTunes, and other platforms. The new one will soon be released across various services as well.

 

About the new album Gralitsa II.  How does Gralitsa II differ from the other albums of the project?

Serge: We really wanted to make it (Gralitsa II) as live as possible — so that when a listener turns it on, they feel the presence of the ensemble creating images for them here and now. That’s why the instrumental parts were recorded almost in a single take, without unnecessary inserts or edits. Even the roughness, imperfections, and nuances of performance were kept in place as much as possible, wherever it could be done. Because when we tried to polish and correct things sequentially, we sometimes lost that special vitality, a certain charm — the very imperfection, the “shadow of a mistake,” that created a unique character.

In a sense, this album turned out a bit punk for us — in the good, bold meaning of the word.

But this is specifically about the new album. The answers we sent refer to Lullaby (which is a completely different universe — as Olga said, it’s the quintessence of the two previous albums — Lullaby).

 

 

Bandcamp (Lullaby): https://gralitsa.bandcamp.com/album/lullaby