FUNNY FACTS:
Benny Goodman Big Band performed in Moscow in 1962 at the Soviet Army Sport Palace. At the height of U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. spy scandal (American U2 spy plane was just shot off the Russian sky) the KGB was suspicious of "capitalist provocations," so only a handful of tickets went into Moscow's jazz fans' hands; several thousand tickets were distributed among "ideologically tested" blue collars through the Party committees at Moscow's industrial facilities. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was present at the concert, but soon got bored by the alien music that he hated, and left during the intermission.
The concert was recorded, and released by RCA in 1962 (never reissued on CD, though.)

Louis Armstrong never performed in the U.S.S.R, though producer George Avakian tried hard to arrange his Soviet Union tour. Ekaterina Furtseva, Soviet Union's culture minister, refused because she felt that "he was going to be too popular." In 1958, Louis Armstrong addressed to his Russian fans a few words in Russian through the Radio Liberty airwaves, and played his trumpet along with the recording of U.S.S.R's 1957 #1 hit, "Five Minutes" (from the Carnival Night movie), which was, coincidentally, the first Soviet recording that involved overdubbing technique (singer Lyudmila Gurchenko sang in an empty studio, listening in earphones to previously recorded Eddie Rosner Big Band.) The recording of this "double overdub" exists, and is released by Russian label SoLyd Records in 2006 (as a bonus track on "The Liberty of Jazz" CD, SLR 0363).

by Cyril Moshkow

FURTHER LISTENING:
October 4, 2009: Cyril Moshkow, the publisher and editor of Jazz.Ru, Russia's only Jazz magazine, appeared on WPFW in Washington, DC as a guest of Larry Appelbaum's Sunday radio show, Sound of Surprise, for a two-hour dialog about the state of jazz in Russia. Many Russian jazz recordings can be heard during the conversation.
LISTEN:
part 1 (wma, 25.7 Mb, 1:13:47); part 2 (wma, 14.2 Mb, 0:40:47)

September 30, 2009: The Open World Leadership Center and the Library of Congress Music Division cosponsored the Russian-American Jazz Summit. Conversations on the American influence in Russian Jazz were led by two world-renowned jazz experts, Russian Cyril Moshkow and American Larry Appelbaum, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
WATCH ON YOUTUBE (62 min.)

EARLIER IN RUSSIAN JAZZ PODCAST:
Jazz.Ru editor Cyril Moshkow tells the story of unique Muscovite jazz accordion player Vladimir Danilin, who celebrates his 60th birthday on December 2, 2006. Danilin started his career playing at the dances in his native town of Lyubertsy, near Moscow, in late 1950s, and by the early 1960s he was already playing jazz clubs in Moscow. Jazz in its pure mainstream form was (and still is) all what he was interested in. This was also true when Vladimir Danilin switched to the piano, and spent many years in the country's most popular jazz big band of the late 1970s - early 80s, Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra. And this stayed true, when Danilin returned to his primary instrument, the accordion, in early 1990s and continues on this instrument ever since...>>>>

IGOR BUTMAN (SAXOPHONE)
Igor has a rare gift: he is not only a brilliant performer, he is also an able promoter of his own work and of the genre in general. He easily makes friends with musicians, politicians, businessmen, and media people, and thus pushes jazz as a genre further than it has ever been in Russia. He is the first Russian jazz musician to release albums on Universal label, and a successful jazz event producer: his Triumph of Jazz festival, held each February since the year 2000, is a must-see on Moscow jazz scene. Igor Butman also runs jazz clubs: Moscow's premier jazz club, called Le Club, the only jazz club in Russia ever mentioned in Down Beat's Top 100 jazz clubs in the world, worked under his artistic direction from 1999 to 2007; currently, the new Igor Butman Club presents world-class live jazz played by both Russian masters and visited Americans.

ARKADY SHILKLOPER (HORNS)
The horn virtuoso, who started his career in the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra and the Moscow Philharmonic Symphony, switched to jazz and improvised music in the 1980s, and since then recorded for ECM, Jaro, and Quinton, worked with Three O, the Vienna Arto Orchestra, the Moscow Art Trio, the Pago Libre band, and in many settings under his own name. Master of French horn, alphorn, and flugelhorn, this virtuoso innovator works now in Germany, though his Russian fans still see him many times a year...>>>>

IVAN FARMAKOVSKY (PIANO)
Ivan, now in his 30s, "paid his dues" when playing in Igor Butman Quartet and Big Band in late 1990s; in 2008, after a few years in a country's most popular rock band (the one which better must not be named,) he resumed his high-profile jazz career by recording an album in New York City with Igr Butman on sax, Gene Jackson on drums, Ugonna Okegwo on bass and Ryan Kisor on trumpet. The very same band, except that now it's the great Eddie Henderson on the trumpet, presents the freshly released "Next To The Shadow" album at the Moscow House of Music on April 21, 2009.