Sasha Chernyak: Bach on Balalaika, USSR to USA, Teacher to Tour Guide

by Marjorie Lynn

Meet Aleksandr (Sasha) Cherynak, a tall, lanky Russian, whose deep brown eyes glow with kindness and intelligence behind the cheap reading glasses he constantly misplaces. Like the many adjuncts who have to hustle a number of part-time jobs to make a full-time living, Sasha does the same. He flies the freeway about 600 miles each week from his home base in Windsor, Ontario. He lives there with his third wife, Elena, also an emigré, and their three young children, twin girls and a son. At 51, Sasha fuses three families. He has a granddaughter from a first marriage two years older than his 6-year-old son, and teenagers from a middle marriage, some of whom remain in Russia.

When he flies the freeways, his first stop is Flint, Michigan. There, he works as the cantor at Temple Beth-el. Next, he’s off to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a gig as the music director at Old St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.

Both congregations love and admire him. Rabbi Karen Companez praises him highly: “Sasha coordinates our small volunteer choir and makes them sound amazing.”

Alice Schmitter is a choir member at St. Patrick’s: “He’s fun, but he’s also devotional. Sasha’s unique!”
Finally, he travels to Washtenaw Community College (WCC), also in Ann Arbor, to teach a continuing education class in Russian culture.

This fusion of countries, religions, and musical traditions indicates the versatility of this lively man.
I first met Sasha in the basement of Old St. Patrick’s at a meeting for those of us who had signed up for a trip to St. Petersburg, Russia. Sasha had agreed to arrange and lead the trip at the request of enthusiastic students in his Russian language and culture courses.

As one student said, “We had enjoyed him so much that we wanted to see his hometown of St. Petersburg with him as our tour guide.”

Eighteen of us, teachers, students, administrators, and parishioners, went with him to distant, culturally rich St. Petersburg, and beyond, during the White Nights Festival held during the long days of late June, 2005.

The Story Begins

Aleksandr Chernyak arrived in the United States in October, 1991, with a wave of Jewish political refugees fleeing the flare-up of anti-semitism after Gorbachev’s glasnost policies led to major upheaval in the USSR, and caused the dissolution of the state in 1991. As Sasha tells it, the fall of Communist rule ironically led to freedom for skinheads and neo-Nazis, and even the police, to harass people:

“Many understood ‘democracy’ to mean there is no law and there is nothing to fear. It was pretty horrible. Skinheads were stopping people who had appearance like the Jews or anyone who looked like they belonged to a different race or nation. Even the police often started the harassment.”

Fearing for his safety, Sasha applied to the Jewish Federation of Flint, Michigan, to emigrate to the U.S.

“I knew that I would lose a lot financially if I left, but I decided I had to,” Sasha commented ruefully.

The life he left in Russia was a very good one. He had a full-time job teaching at the University of Culture, and a small, successful orchestra that toured all over Europe playing a type of fusion of traditional classical music on Russian folk instruments—Bach on balalaika—at major music festivals. He also had a gig with Lüneburg University, in Germany, to work together on combined projects in theater, music, and other cultural arts.

Due to an administrative mix-up, his Flint sponsors expected to greet Sasha the “mathematician” instead of Sasha the “musician,” so “it was a big surprise to them when they met me at the airport and I had all these musical instruments. I have my personal collection of 25 Russian folk instruments that I can play and write music for. I brought the collection with me hoping to use my experience to earn a living.”

In Communist Russia, in order to protect themselves from social and political persecution, Jews became secular and assimilated. As a result, even though he was a Jew, Sasha never learned Hebrew. Despite this obvious drawback, within four days of his arrival he landed a job as a cantor at Temple Beth-el. Says Sasha: “I didn’t know Hebrew, but I’d sung in German, Italian, Greek, various Russian dialects, like Georgian and Armenian, so what’s one more language?”

The Music Man

Sasha had trained at the University of Culture in St. Petersburg, where he received a degree that translates to “Manager of Cultural Education and Enlightening Worker of the Highest Qualification,” meaning he graduated with honors. Soon after his arrival in Michigan, he applied to the University of Michigan’s Ph.D. program in music. Even though he had earned more than 300 credit hours, officials equated his diploma to a Bachelor’s Degree. As a result, he took a Master’s in Music Education from the University of Michigan School of Music, and began the life of an adjunct.

The Teacher

Music is his passion, but teaching music and culture is his profession, and he seeks to do this in as many arenas as possible. In addition to his work with the parish and the Temple, teaching at the community college and at the University of Michigan-Flint, he is a resource musician and educator at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan. Sasha has performed at the Ann Arbor Book Festival, and at the Russian Cultural Center open house in Troy, Michigan. Sylvia Meloche, an administrator at the Center for Russian and East European Studies says, “I hire him whenever I can.”

Marilyn Finkbeiner, one of Sasha’s WCC students, says, “Sasha has a personality that lends itself to teaching. He is charming, fascinating, and always kind to the students. Being well-versed in his subject matter, he makes it especially interesting to the students by offering personal tidbits or asides that make the hours fly by. As you might guess, the students look forward to being in his class the following semester!”

Another student, Elle Gauger, echoed these sentiments, adding, “I clung to his every word and took every class he offered!”

In spite of his success with students, Sasha has found his experience with college administrations frustrating. At WCC, officials resisted his efforts to develop new courses.

“Rather than just teaching over and over ‘Learn Russian in eight weeks,’ I proposed an ongoing class that would grow into a year-long course of study that would culminate in a trip to Russia, but the administration just wanted something that would bring money now,” he lamented.

In Russia, Sasha explains, it’s more lucrative to work as a part-time faculty member than a full-time faculty member. It’s very common for faculty to have three or four part-time teaching jobs. As for the students, Sasha says, “in Russia, students compete with professors for good grades and a good life; in America, students compete with each other.”

Trained to teach at universities both in the USSR and in the U.S., Sasha believes that learning is about understanding and analyzing, and that the most important role of a teacher is to show students how and let them do it. He still hopes to fulfill his dream of teaching an ongoing class that would that would culminate in a trip to Russia.

His brown eyes twinkle as this dynamic musician/teacher looks for more opportunities to fuse his passion for his homeland and its culture with learning opportunities for others: “I believe that the teacher shows the right way, but the learning is done by the student, so, I’m already looking into the possibility of cruising through the inland lakes between St. Petersburg to Moscow with stops at historical and cultural places along the way!”