A KILTED figure paces in Moscow's Filyovsky Park and the wail of Scottish bagpipes fills the morning air. The Muscovites who jog and walk their dogs here are no longer surprised. They are used to seeing Vladimir Laserson, the eccentric Russian who thinks he's a Celt.
Vladimir (41), is a specialist in all types of ethnic music but especially the music of Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and, of course, Ireland. He has a busy week ahead as Moscow's growing Irish community prepares to celebrate St Patrick's Day. He will be called upon to play his guitar, flute and tin whistle in pubs across the city.
Moscow's expatriate Celts may appreciate Vladimir. But his Russian contemporaries, all busy trying to make money, think he is odd, to say the least, while neighbours in the high rise block where he lives with his parents have been driven to despair by his late night practice sessions. Vladimir does not care. His path may be a lonely one but he has found a world in which he feels at home.
He studied the flute at the Moscow Conservatory, but didn't finish his classical course because he disliked his teacher's academic approach. "They were so dry," he said. "They did not understand the first thing, that music comes from the heart."
So he began working in the sphere of ethnic music, a field the authorities hardly approved of back in the days when the Soviet Union was supposed to be one big happy family of internationalists.
He has not had the opportunity to travel to either Britain or Ireland. Learning entirely from records he has taught himself to play dozens of instruments, including the guitar, the lute, the Scottish bagpipes, Irish percussion, tin whistle and spoons. He is more a one man orchestra than a one man band.
"Basically any instrument you can bang, pluck or blow, I can play," he said. When he needs a fiddle, he brings in his father, Boris, a classically trained violinist, who was also converted late in life to Celtic music.
The passion for the Scottish bagpipes first gripped Vladimir about four years ago. He sewed his own kilt from a piece of woolly material, the nearest thing he could get to tartan in Moscow, and made a sporran by cutting up his mother's handbag. His first bagpipes were a souvenir set which were almost impossible to play.
As a result of a report on the BBC, people in Scotland heard about his plight. A family from Glasgow sent him a proper Scottish costume, a sporran maker from Inverness donated a real sporran and an old man, also from Inverness, sent him bag pipes which he could no longer play himself because of ill health.
With his ginger hair and red beard, Vladimir looked the part when he donned the costume. Hours of practising made him proficient on the pipes. Sometimes he works with a singer, who performs old Celtic ballads. The pipes are his first bag of wind, she is his second, he jokes.
Vladimir earns his daily bread by painting posters to advertise classical concerts at the Moscow Philharmonic Hall. But he is beginning to make a little money from his Celtic performances too. He has appeared on local radio and television and tours schools, giving talks to Russian children about the culture of the Celts. He has also advertised whiskey in his land of hardened vodka drinkers.
Vladimir especially looks forward to Burns night in January when the Moscow Caledonian Society invites him to appear. Scots came to Russia under Peter the Great to help the tsar modernise his vast but backward country, and today there is a significant community of Russians of Scottish origin. At this year's Burns supper, Vladimir was introduced to Angus MacDonald, a visiting pipe major from Scotland. "I was in awe, as you might imagine," said Vladimir, "but he was very kind and gave me some useful playing tips."
Moscow's Irish community is much younger, but becoming very influential. At the launch of perestroika, the only Irishman in Moscow apart from diplomats was Conor O'Clery of The Irish Times. But now many business people are here, running, among other enterprises, chains of supermarkets and giving to Russian charities such as children's homes.
St Patrick's Day is now a major event in the Moscow calendar, eagerly awaited by westerners and Russians alike as an excuse to celebrate the coming of spring. After a service in the Catholic church, crowds parade down New Arbat Street and make for the bars. Vladimir is certain to be among them, banging and blowing his pipes and drums.