Young Organist Has Keys To Bright Future

A small Russian boy approached Stefan Kozinski after a January concert at Spokane’s First Presbyterian Church.

Eleven-year-old Aleksandr Kirrilov asked: Will you be my teacher? He’d been impressed with Kozinski’s performance on the organ during Connoisseur Concert’s Bach Festival.

“I was deeply moved,” Kozinski said months later. Though just a brief encounter, Kozinski felt he was meeting someone “with major talent.”

“I could perceive it in his face and bearing,” said Kozinski, who is well-known in Spokane as a composer, conductor, arranger and pianist. “He was very intent and focused.”

Since immigrating to the Spokane Valley from Moscow with his family in November, Aleksandr Kirrilov, called Sasha, has been obsessed with the organ. He read everything he could on the instrument while in Russia but did not begin lessons until February.

His first concert was on Easter Sunday, at Opportunity Free Methodist Church. In June, he played for his sixth-grade classmates at Opportunity Elementary School.

In six months, Sasha has written 19 pieces for the organ and is by far the youngest artist on a compact disc featuring Spokane organists due to be released in September.

“I’d say he’s probably akin to a child prodigy,” said Jim Wallrabenstein, president of the Spokane chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Sasha is the first musician he’s met - adult or child - who’s demonstrated so much talent so quickly.

“Someone who has an ear for the organ, it would be hard for me to imagine them not getting hooked on it,” Wallrabenstein said. “You’ve almost got the equivalent of a symphony orchestra at your fingertips.”

Sasha is from a musical family and also plays violin and piano. His grandfather plays violin for the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in Russia and his sister, Olga, 20, graduated from a music college in Moscow.

Sasha is small, almost frail, with delicate features and light brown hair. He has the long thin hands and fingers of a concert pianist. When he discusses the organ, his face lights up.

“It’s big sound,” Sasha said, raising both hands in the air like a conductor. “In Russia, I spoke about organ to everybody, and everyone was running from me as fast as possible.”

After the Bach Festival, Kozinski told the Kirrilovs that he had recently moved to New York City and could not teach Sasha. He directed the Kirrilovs instead to Jim Barrett, organist and music director at Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral in Spokane.

During an “organ crawl” in May, a group of organists went to about five churches to sample the organs. Sasha “was the nervy one who got up and played in front of everyone at every church,” Barrett said.

Sasha’s parents, Konstantin and Lyudmila Kirrilov, support him 100 percent. When Sasha began lessons, he practiced at Opportunity Free Methodist Church, two miles from the Kirrilovs’ East Third Avenue home. Sasha and his father or mother walked to the church two to three times each week to practice.

“We have to help him as much as we can,” said Konstantin Kirrilov. “If children have some talent or skills, this is our duty to help them. This is the most important thing that we have to do in life.

“We think if Sasha will be an organist, it will be great,” he said. “I think it is beautiful that he can compose this music.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo