Local Musician's Life Story Offers Lessons Similar to Those in "The Soloist"

Local resident and talented musician Anton Sviridenko performed at the kickoff event for Malden Reads at the Malden Public Library on February 24. Anton’s own story is a fitting tribute to that of Nathaniel Ayers, the main character in the story “The Soloist,” this year’s book selection for the One City, One Book project.

In the story told by author Steve Lopez, music helped Nathaniel to survive both in his delusional world and in the cruel reality of Los Angeles’s Skid Row. We can say that music is the third hero of this story, no less interesting and intriguing than the outcast musician Ayers and the thoughtful and compassionate journalist Lopez, who tried to help him.

The 19-year-old Sviridenko also found his way in life because of music and the devoted help of his parents. He was born in St.-Petersburg, Russia, blind and with limited learning abilities. His parents immigrated to the U.S. when he was less than two years old.

Sviridenko began to play music when he was four. Music became his key to the outer world and his way of self-expression. He plays many musical instruments, including piano, violin, guitar, accordion, flute, harmonica, and drums. He likes to improvise and to arrange melodies in different musical styles. Shortly, music became his life and his redemption. For him, it is easier to express what he feels by playing music—classical, folk, contemporary, or even tango (his last hobby)—than by using words.

There are other similarities in the life stories of Ayers and Sviridenko. Both are very talented people whose successful musical careers were either interrupted (in Ayers’ case), or complicated from the very beginning (for Sviridenko) by medical issues. For them, every step forward in their struggles was often followed by two or three steps back, which can be devastating and frustrating for those who try to support and help them. Both musicians live in their own universes, somewhat isolated from reality, and their only serious passion is music. For them, the surrounding world is not so important; all that matters is music that, in the words of German poet Berthold Auerbach, “washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

Ayers and Sviridenko do not dream about professional success, they think only about music, they live in order to play and play in order to live. Music helps, teaches, heals, and saves them, because, as John Logan said, “Music is the medicine of the mind.” Both musicians like to share their love of music with other people, because for them music is a vital part of life, a unique language of communication that has no linguistic or cultural barriers. Two famous writers and poets, Hans Christian Andersen and Heinrich Heine, brilliantly wrote about this in practically the same words: “Where words fail, music speaks,” and “When words leave off, music begins.”

Music frees Ayers and Sviridenko from the shackles of disease, and helps them to rise to new heights, and to reach horizons unseen by others. The world-famous orchestral conductor Leopold Stokowski expressed this very poetically when he said “A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” The silence that lives inside their minds and surrounds them also feeds their imagination, helping them to hear and play different melodies, sounds, and rhythms.

The life stories of both musicians also show that it is very important to have people who can support you in life, friends and family, and that real compassion can help to overcome the obstacles—to lead people, as the Russian proverb describes, “through the blackthorns to the stars.” Compassion, understanding, and comprehension are the key words for those who want to help people, especially people with special needs. While helping others, we also help ourselves—as it happened with Lopez, and with Ayers’ parents—to see the depth and uniqueness of the human soul, talent, and abilities. "The Soloist” is a true story set in Los Angeles, but speaks of universal truths, as evidenced by this local story, no less remarkable.

You will have the opportunity to hear Anton perform again, along with two other musicians that form “The Perkins Trio,” as part of the “Community Performance” event for Malden Reads on Sunday, April 10. For details and more information about the One City, One Book project, please visit www.maldenreads.org.

Inna Babitskaya is a freelance writer and ESL teacher assistant at the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden. She worked as an editor-in-chief and journalist, and a researcher at the State Pedagogical University in St.-Petersburg, Russia.