Editing Openai/6874b524-4134-8013-b5e6-0601c853d841 (section)

===== By 1910, at the age of 12, Yakob had been granted special permission (via Polyakov’s tireless advocacy and a bribe involving a military officer’s piano) to enter the Moscow Conservatory’s junior preparatory program—one of only three Jewish students admitted that year. =====

There, he encountered the seismic aesthetic shifts then shaking Russian music. A performance of Stravinsky’s early works, including Fireworks and sketches for The Firebird, left Yakob stunned. He called the music “a machine made of feathers and thunder.”

Even more potent was his exposure to Prokofiev, then a swaggering student at the Conservatory who scandalized professors with his sarcastic harmonies and violent energy. Prokofiev’s Toccata in D minor, performed in 1912, became an obsession for Yakob. He began to experiment with pieces that mashed up Orthodox chant, Yiddish lullabies, African-American ragtime, and avant-garde dissonance.

This “Gershovitz Mode” was exhilarating—and dangerous. More than one instructor warned him he was "cultivating chaos."

He didn't stop.