Gennadi Golstein

Gennadi Golstein ( Russian Геннадий Львович Гольштейн ; * 1938 in Leningrad ) is a Russian jazz bandleader, composer and alto saxophonist of modern jazz . He was one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian jazz scene of the post-Stalinist era of the 1950s and 1960s and played in the leading big bands , such as in the orchestra of Eddie Rosner and Josif Weinstein (where he also arranged).

Gennadi Golstein turned to jazz in 1950; Stylistic role models for him at that time were Charlie Parker and in the 1950s Cannonball Adderley , later in the 1960s these were more the music of Roland Kirk and musicians of free jazz . In the documentary Jazz für die Russen - To Russia with Jazz (2011), he reports on encounters with Phil Woods , Zoot Sims and other modern jazz musicians in Leningrad during their 1962 tour of the Soviet Union with the Benny Goodman Orchestra.

In the 1960s he had a quintet in Leningrad, with Konstantin Nossow (trumpet), Dawid Semjonowitsch Goloschtschokin (piano), Victor Smirnov (bass), Stanislaw Streltzow (drums).

In his lyrical playing he combined the inspirations of hard bop with the primitiveness of folkloric themes and the polyphony of classical music from the pre- baroque period. For a decade and a half after 1955, Gennadi Golstein was one of the leading figures in Soviet jazz. After that he lost interest in jazz and turned to classical music.

literature

• S. Frederick Starr: Red and Hot. Jazz in Russia 1917-1990 . Vienna, hannibal, 1990
• S. Frederick Starr: Jazz in the USSR . In: That's Jazz - The Sound of the 20th Century (exhibition catalog), Darmstadt, 1988

Web links

• Gennadij Golstein - Great Joys from February 19, 1998 (Russian)
• Gennady Golstain - Doomed to be Happy from July 29, 2000 (Russian)
• Saxophones of St. Petersburg in Riga from 1 January 2000 (Russian)