Sunday, September 7, 2014

JAZZ FESTIVAL HONORS PIONEERING RECORD LABEL

Festival co-founder and Moscow-based saxophone player Alexei Kruglov.
Photo: Yekaterina Melnikova
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
Published: September 3, 2014
The Leo Feigin Festival, a series of large-scale avant-garde jazz events celebrating Russian-born, U.K.-based producer and long-time BBC Russian Service music presenter Leo Feigin, will open in St. Petersburg this week.

This year’s festival — the third since it was first held — is dedicated to the 35th anniversary of Feigin’s record label, Leo Records, and will tour seven Russian cities.

Launched in February 2012 by Feigin and Moscow-based saxophone player Alexei Kruglov, who leads his own ensemble Krugly Band, the Leo Feigin Festival features both Leo Records artists and those similar in spirit.

“There will be a huge number of musicians taking part, especially in Moscow, and due to the support from the Goethe Institute, we’ll have foreign acts for the first time,” said Feigin via Skype.

According to Feigin, the Moscow part of the festival also will be filmed for a future documentary with director Oksana Matiyevskaya. “We will film as much as possible with her and hopefully something will come out of it,” he said.

Born in Leningrad in 1938, Feigin was forced by the KGB to leave the Soviet Union in 1973 following his meeting with legendary US jazz broadcaster Willis Conover. After a short stint in Israel, he landed in London in 1974, where he started to work at the BBC Russian Service. For more than 25 years he presented a weekly jazz show under his radio name Alexei Leonidov, as well as daily news stories. He formed Leo Records in London in 1979, inspired by a smuggled tape by the Vilnius, Lithuania-based Ganelin Trio.
read more: http://www.sptimesrussia.com/story/40668

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