There are stories that cannot be told in a single post.
When you lose someone close to you, at first it is almost impossible to put events into any kind of proper order. One memory catches on another. Suddenly you remember a photograph from thirty-six years ago, then some completely ridiculous conversation, then a concert, then a hospital corridor.
Perhaps only after some time has passed do you begin to understand that all of it was part of the same story.
And now I want to tell that story.
Not the story of loss.
The story of a return.
In 2017, My Previous Life Ended
I was already an established musician and artist.
And my previous musical career came to a very abrupt end.
Strangely enough, today I can say that I do not regret it.
Perhaps I had already received everything I was meant to receive from that particular road.
And then fate, circumstance, the will of God — call it whatever you like — turned my entire life in a completely different direction in the space of a single day.
What followed was a fairly long period of physical rehabilitation.
And probably an even more difficult period of psychological recovery.
I practically left the stage.
At one point, I genuinely believed I would never return to it.
Music itself did not disappear.
It simply became a different part of my life.
And rather unexpectedly, what helped me find my way back to it was… children’s animation.
I began writing musical accompaniment and developing musical concepts for animated projects.
It sounds almost amusing now, but at the time it became one of the best forms of rehabilitation I could have had.
I was interested again.
I had to create characters through music, moods, spaces, little musical worlds.
Then other projects appeared.
Television series.
Programs.
Production work.
I continued working with music, but in a completely different way.
I thought my story with the stage was over.
As it turned out, it wasn’t.
The People Who Never Really Disappeared
Evgen Voronenko and I met during our first year at music college — more precisely, in the music department, the variety performance program, at what was then the Kyiv State College of Variety and Circus Arts.
Evgen on drums, Viktor Korrak on bass, and me on guitar — the three of us were once almost inseparable.
We studied together.
We played together.
We made fun of our teachers together — purely out of our profound respect for the educational process, of course.
Then came military service.
The three of us served in the same Armed Forces ensemble. For a musician, it was a perfectly natural way to complete military service.
After one of our concerts, some blond-haired guy came up to us.
His name was Samuil.
He was huge and slightly awkward.
Sam’s Russian was terrible back then.
We tried to understand one another, explained things with our hands, laughed, tried again.
That first conversation lasted almost until morning.
That was how Sam came into our lives.
Later, he became our keyboard player.
And then life scattered all of us across different countries.
At certain times, we worked together again.
At others, we played in completely different bands.
Each of us developed a life of our own — work, family, problems, plans.
But somehow, the friendship survived all of it.
When my life changed so dramatically in 2017, these guys came to me.
They were there.
They made sure I was not alone during that period.
I will never forget that.
COVID Unexpectedly Brought Us Together Again
Then COVID happened.
And strangely enough, that was when we began spending more time together again.
Only this time, through screens.
Before that, we had simply called each other.
Suddenly we learned how to use all these new technologies, meet as a group of four on video calls, and even try to play together remotely.
We recorded a few demos as well.
When the borders opened again, we began meeting in person.
Every few months, somebody would fly somewhere, we would get together, play, and occasionally do very small performances.
Almost all the music I wrote during that period passed, one way or another, through this little group of ours.
Once again, we were living in different countries.
I was in Germany.
Viktor was in Slovakia.
And in 2021, Sam brought Evgen to live with him in New York.
And it was probably Sam who would later have to carry the heaviest part of this entire story on his shoulders.
They truly became family.
The Phone Call
Last autumn, Sam called me.
He told me Evgen was ill.
Not simply ill.
He had started chemotherapy the day before.
The situation was extremely serious.
We all got together and flew to New York.
It was shortly before New Year’s. Evgen had only recently been discharged from the hospital.
We sat together.
And we did not talk about death.
We talked about treatment.
About the future.
About music.
About plans.
About wishes.
About what we would do afterwards.
And at some point, Evgen said that more than anything, he wanted to bring back, even just for a little while, the time when we used to perform together.
Just walk onto a stage again.
And play.
Like we used to.
That was when the idea of the tour was born.
We Had No Idea Whether It Would Work
If someone had asked me at that moment how realistic our plan actually was, I probably would not have been able to answer.
We celebrated New Year’s together.
Then we went our separate ways.
I returned to Germany.
We gathered the songs we had written over the previous years and started putting a program together.
I began contacting venues and arranging concerts.
Germany was the easiest place to begin.
We all came to Berlin.
We had a rehearsal base and studio there.
And the work began.
Our first concert was on February 28.
And it went amazingly well.
Then came another.
And another.
Berlin.
Frankfurt.
Munich.
Nuremberg.
Other cities.
We travelled across Germany almost from one end to the other — from north to south.
Then came Austria.
Our final performance there was on an outdoor stage during Eurovision.
Then Slovakia.
Budapest.
Most of the shows were in smaller clubs and concert venues.
And all that time, people kept writing to us:
Why aren’t you promoting the concerts?
Where is the proper tour schedule?
Where is the next show?
Where can we buy tickets? We want to come.
We could almost never give them a proper answer.
We Were Walking Through a Minefield
Now I can explain why.
Very often, we did not know ourselves whether the next concert would happen.
We were afraid to launch a large advertising campaign.
We were afraid of letting down the people who were providing venues, organizing the shows, and selling tickets.
Because nobody knew how Evgen would feel the next day.
Travelling.
Hotels.
Rehearsals.
A new city.
A concert.
Then the road again.
All of that is difficult even for a completely healthy person.
And Evgen was undergoing treatment.
So the entire tour felt like walking through a minefield.
We took one step.
Then looked to see whether we could take the next.
Then another.
And another.
And Then Evgen Seemed to Come Back to Life
And something happened that I don’t think any of us had really expected.
March.
April.
May.
They were extraordinary months.
Evgen played.
He worked.
He joked.
He walked onto that stage night after night.
The venues were full.
Sometimes the clubs were absolutely packed, and to this day I still do not fully understand how people even found out about our concerts, because we had almost no real advertising campaign.
At some point, we even began to think, very cautiously:
what if the worst really was behind us?
Human beings have a way of holding on to hope.
Even when they understand how fragile it is.
Then There Was One More Dream
After the European part of the tour, we took a break.
Evgen needed to undergo another round of treatment.
And his next big dream was Texas.
Sam organized that part.
Dallas.
Houston.
Other cities.
And that was a beautiful time too.
Truly beautiful.
But we had to cancel the final three concerts in Houston.
We returned to New York immediately.
Almost straight away, Evgen was admitted to the hospital.
For more than a month, he underwent intensive treatment.
It did not help.
Evgen passed away on August 12.
Thirty-Six Years
Before we said goodbye, I found an old photograph on my computer.
It was taken in 1990, shortly before Evgen’s birthday.
His birthday is August 28.
So the photograph was taken around these same days.
Only thirty-six years ago.
When I first wrote that number down, it frightened me.
Thirty-six years.
How is that even possible?
It feels as though all of this happened only recently.
There were no smartphones then.
You could not take a hundred photographs in one evening, look at them immediately, delete the bad ones and send the rest to the cloud.
That photograph was taken with an ordinary little film camera.
At some point, I scanned it.
Now I tried to restore it as well as I possibly could.
Very few photographs have survived in general.
For some reason, almost everything that truly matters was preserved not in pictures.
It stayed in my head.
Perhaps our generation simply was not used to documenting our lives continuously.
Film.
Developing.
Printing.
A photograph was an event back then.
I Couldn’t Talk. So I Wrote.
After Evgen died, something strange happened to me.
I could barely speak to anyone.
I could stay silent.
I could write.
But I could not talk.
And there was another very strange sensation.
It was as though I could feel the world through cellophane.
Everything was happening right beside me.
I could see it.
Hear it.
Understand it.
But it felt as if a thin, transparent layer had appeared between me and the world.
I do not know how else to describe it.
Perhaps someone, somewhere, has felt something similar.
That is why those texts appeared.
I suppose I simply needed some way to let all of it out.
August 28
We knew that on August 28 we would still be in New York.
It is Evgen’s birthday.
After that, I will fly to Germany.
I need to start finding my way back into some kind of normal rhythm.
Eat properly.
Sleep.
Go back to the gym.
In other words — return to ordinary life.
Although after something like this, the phrase “ordinary life” sounds rather strange.
It is never quite the same again.
Now I Understand What That Tour Really Was
While all of this was happening, we thought about concerts.
About travelling.
About whether Evgen could manage it.
About the next city.
The next venue.
Whether tomorrow’s performance would happen.
Now I understand it differently.
Every concert was more than a concert.
Every new city was time.
Another day.
Another week.
Another evening when four old friends could walk onto a stage together.
We thought we were organizing a tour.
In reality, we were simply being given a little more time with one another.
And perhaps that is why I regret none of it.
Not even the fear.
Not even the constant uncertainty.
Not even that minefield we walked through for several months.
Because we made it as far through it as we possibly could.
It Was Not My Comeback
When people later described that tour as my return to the stage, I sometimes caught myself resisting the phrase.
No.
I don’t think it was my comeback.
I did not need to prove to anyone that I could still walk onto a stage.
I had stopped thinking about life in those terms a long time ago.
One chapter of my life ended in 2017.
A completely different one began after it.
This tour did not happen because I wanted to reclaim my past.
It happened because one of my oldest friends said:
“I want to walk onto a stage with you one more time.”
And we simply answered:
“All right. Then we will.”
Sometimes that is enough.
What Remains
There will not be another concert with the four of us.
That is difficult to write.
But everything that happened during those months remains.
The music.
The recordings.
The journeys.
Packed clubs.
Completely ridiculous conversations on the road.
Exhaustion.
Laughter.
New York.
Berlin.
Germany.
Austria.
Texas.
And the memory of a man who, despite his illness, kept walking onto the stage and sitting down behind the drums.
But perhaps the most important thing that remains is not even in the music.
It is the understanding of something very simple.
We constantly behave as though there is an endless amount of time ahead of us.
We can call later.
Meet later.
Play together later.
Say something important later.
Go somewhere later.
But sometimes later simply never comes.
We were incredibly fortunate in this story.
For us, that later did come.
A few months.
A few countries.
A few dozen evenings.
And now I understand:
it was not simply a tour.
It was the time we were given.