When I was studying voice with my teacher, Rosalie Miller, on 57th street in New York City, taking two lessons per week, I went one day to a small 'drug store' that was well known for its ice cream counter. There I met a remarkable lady, Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, Tolstoy's daughter. She befriended me and we had wonderful conversations on all kinds of topics. Countess Tolstoy treated me as an adult though I was barely out of my teens. Looking back I see a young man with little world-experience taken in as a friend by a most gracious lady who would buy ice cream sodas for him!
On each step of this most marvelous and miraculous path of yoga I have been blessed by friendships with extraordinary people.
In those days when studying music and singing was everything a young man hoped for I gave many concerts with a small Russian Orthodox choir in Spring Valley, New York. The choir was blessed to have an excellent conductor, Vassily Flustikoff, who always emphasized singing a higher music, the music of the spirit, and not wasting one's time with music that had no uplifting value.
One day he showed me the scar on his shoulder where he was run through by a sword from a Red Army soldier when he was fighting in General Wrangel's white army.
Vassily inculcated in me the love of singing sacred music and featured me as a soloist at many concerts. He had the gift of bringing the most beautiful sounds from a choir, from the softest pianississimo to the most powerful fortississimo, all with an inward turn to the essence of beauty and as an offering to the Divine.
Narad (Richard Eggenberger)
Copyright 2016