Yesterday, Sofie directed Laurence Fishburne in a four-hour recording for an audio tour of the forthcoming Russia! exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was fantastic—as was Laurence Fishburne, of course. You may notice that a certain EiNY managed to wangle his way into the recording studio too. That was at the behest of Sofie who needed someone to help with Laurence’s Russian pronounciation. At last, I now know what my four years at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (surely you mean Studios-ed) was for.

I have to say that Laurence Fishburne sounded great, perfecting Tsarevna Natalia Alexeevna, Tsar Fedor Alekseevich, and Marfa Matveevna Apraksina, as well as sounding like a Russian mafioso every time he said the word Bratsk. He managed to get his throat and tongue around practically every single KH, ZH, and SHCH. Although my, and I think everybody else’s favorite including Laurence’s, was the non-Russian word iconostasis, which Laurence managed to enunciate like the declamation of an Italian gangster in Goodfellas by putting the stress on the second “o”. It was with no small amount of pride that I realized that one or two of Laurence’s near-perfect renderings of Russian names was achieved with my help. And with no small amount of admiration that I thought that if you put Laurence Fishburne in Russia for one week he’d sound like a native. He’s a natural Russian speaker.

Despite being tired, a little under the weather, and missing his son who he had just dropped off for his first year at university, Laurence was friendly, courteous, and a consummate professional. I was sitting less than a couple of feet from one of the speakers opposite the recording booth and it was amazing to watch him lean towards the microphone and create a voice which was at once powerful, deep, and soft. It literally massages your inner ear. The tour is going to sound great.

It was also interesting to find out that Laurence Fishburne grew up just a few blocks from our apartment, in Polhemus Place, in Park Slope, Brooklyn; that he has a property in New Orleans, and friends there who have had to flee; and that he has visited Russia twice—he’s partied at the Summer Palace in St Petersburg, and he’s been on a motorcycle ride from St Petersburg to Novgorod.

The best anecdote, alas, I shall have to keep to myself, but it’s a bloody good one…