Articles by Bryon MacWilliams



Going on a Personal Journey Through Russian Baths

American journalist Bryon MacWilliams traveled far and wide in Russia over the nearly twelve years he was a Moscow-based correspondent. Everywhere he went, he sought out the best steam in the local baths, or banyas.

Talking Russian Politics in an American Banya

I am resting between steams at a Russian bathhouse on the outskirts of Philadelphia, doing what I try never to do at banyas: talking politics.

Fending Off a Hostile Takeover at the Banya

The message dropped into my inbox with a virtual kerplunk. ""Banya Crisis,"" it said. It had been sent by a friend, an American lawyer who negotiates multibillion-dollar oil deals.

The Ushanka Is Dead, Long Live the Ushanka

The ushanka is dead. There, I've said it. All you Russophiles out there relax and take a chill pill, as it were.

North Ossetian Conflict Began in the Kremlin

The young mother and her three sons had been corralled at gunpoint into the gymnasium at School No. 1 in Beslan.

The New Curriculum

Will a new academic specialty orchestrated by the Russian Orthodox Church threaten Russia's secular educational systems?

The New Curriculum

Will a new academic specialty orchestrated by the Russian Orthodox Church threaten Russia's secular educational systems?

Upstairs, Downstairs

The Brain Drain

Moscow's Jazz Garden Enriched by Youth

5-Day Jazz Fest Lures the Great and the Average

ESSAY: Moscow Starts Folding Up the Welcome Mat

It Ain't Easy Being the Best: Igor Butman crossed the Atlantic to learn

Much Touted Jazz Fest Loses Funds, Headliners

ESSAY: Half Dead in a Pool of Blood, But So What?

Giving Fetishes a Pat on the Back

Mother Starts Model School From Scratch Near Moscow

GOURMET'S NOTEBOOK: Le Stelle Del Pescatore

Daredevil Unfurls Wings Over City

Moscow Babylon

New Rag Covers Life on the Street

GOURMET'S NOTEBOOK: San Diego

CLUBBING NOTES

HOW TO WHILE AWAY: The Endless Holidays

Lessons From the Master

Lessons From the Master

Lush red velvet hangs like crepe along the length of the corridor of white marble. Red carpet crawls up the lower halves of the walls, mirrors dominate the upper halves. Chandeliers shimmer like icicles in the sun. Beneath the cascading light Denis Vaslov runs his fingers up and down the neck of his cream colored guitar as if he were doing calisthenics. ""Soon,"" Vaslov, 21, says. ""Soon he will come."" Several minutes pass before a trim, middle-age man appears in a light blue dress shirt and a patterned yellow tie. His silver hair is longish, parted in the center. He has a thin, elegantly clipped mustache. Alexei Kuznetsov looks more like the soprano in a barbershop quartet than a legendary Russian jazz guitarist. ""Welcome to our little guitar club,"" he says. It is a Wednesday at Accord, one of Moscow's premier music stores. Over the past year and a half, the weekly afternoon gatherings at the landmark store on Nizhnyaya Maslovka Ulitsa have become ritual for the city's aspiring jazz guitarists.

Disillusioned Immigrant Struggles With Rat Race

Russian Jazz Celebrates Survival With Gala

The Other Side Of the City's Party

Rollins Rolls Into Russia, Rage and All



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