In the years bracketing 2011, there were 500,000 Russian-speaking people in Los Angeles which behooved TIM TURNER to learn to speak Russian. At the gym in Hollywood, Turner met Moisey Gorbaty, a music professor from Moldova, they became friends and Gorbaty began teaching him Russian. Gorbaty soon convinced Turner that in his life story, there wasn’t just one book, there were four and so began more than a decade-long journey that included trips to Moldova, Russia and Italy. After many drafts, The Reluctant Conductor is Part One. Part Two is coming in 2024.

The writer of six plays including the critically acclaimed Out Late, as well as High Time, Chicken and Fish and Prairie Fire, Turner has written full-time since the early 1980s. He has also written an original screenplay, a libretto, adapted two of his plays into screenplays, and written many short plays.He has three photographs in the permanent collection of The New Orleans Museum of Art.

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A prolific composer and the proprietor of Moisey’s Piano Service, where he tunes and restores pianos, MOISEY GORBATY also teaches piano, guitar, music theory and Russian Language. Born in Kishinev, Moldova, he began playing accordion at the age of four, won his first music competition at age eight, and since the age of fifteen supported his family working as a concertmaster and leader of union bands. He graduated from Stefan Neaga College of Music in 1969, the Moldovan Conservatory of Music in 1973, and served in the Soviet Army from 1973 to 1974. He immigrated to Los Angeles in 1989 via Vienna and Rome, and started his piano service with his wife, a three-year-old daughter, no money, and speaking only Russian.