A secret Moscow concert honours a dissident pianist

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A “secret” concert in Moscow was held on Thursday in memory of Pavel Kushnir, a musician who died in July 2024 in a pretrial detention center in Birobidzhan. He was under arrest for anti-war videos that he posted on his own YouTube channel, which had five subscribers at the time of his death. According to the participants, the exact place and time of the event became known literally a few hours before the concert. Nevertheless, the hall was full. “Yulia Galyamina said very important words about Pavel being not a victim but a hero – because he consciously committed a heroic act. Not every one of us can be a hero, but every one of us can be a citizen who creates such a situation in the country, in his city, so that heroism is needed less,” said one of the participants in the concert.

The event organizers said that they wanted to “live and comprehend the figure and legacy of Pavel Kushnir.” The musicians who took part in the concert recalled Pavel’s series of audio broadcasts “Mazurkas on Wednesdays,” calling them “a diary that he kept for the last year and a half of his life.”

The funds raised at the concert will go to the development of the “Music Without Violence” project, which provides legal, psychological and other assistance to musicians in Russia.

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