«Oleg’s playing is marvelous combination of styles, incorporating a whole lot of
players. I hear echoes of the 1920s and John Coltrane combined with the unstructured
jazz...»
Bud Shank, Arts&Entertainment, USA
«!e Russian sax player breaks down genre borders»
Paul Freeman, Entertainment Writer, USA
Oleg Kireyev is the "first musician in Russia to practice ethnic jazz incorporating Bashkirian folk instruments and guttural singing techniques – is one of the few all-round jazz players on contemporary Russian stage. He is equally interested in
mainstream and modal jazz as well as in fusion and root music. However, he seems to have long-standing relationships with his motherland’s melos: Kireyev was born in Bashkiria, the place near the European/Asian border, and considers himself grown
out of a mixture of two cultures, Russian and Bashkir. Being at once infuenced by the powerful heritage of bebop and traditional jazz, combined with African rhythms, Latin jazz music and Asian and Moldavian free jazz music, Oleg developed his own unique style paradigm.
Kireyev’s career as a musician spans decades. In 1985, as world music was gaining in popularity, Oleg formed a band called “Orlan” which became a fantastic success in Russia, a revolutionary music phenomenon for the then-Soviet audience. Soon Kireyev spent three years in Poland and took part in the Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw and played with members of the Miles Davis rhythm section. Almost every night he performed in the best jazz clubs with Poland’s high caliber jazz musicians. At the same time he was artistic director of a jazz club in Krakow.
Poland, although an Eastern Bloc country back in the early 1990s, was famous for its wide array of high-caliber jazz performances and it was there that Kireyev was "first noticed by international jazz a"cionados. A scholarship to the Bud Shank jazz saxophonist school (1994) pulled him into the international jazz scene, where he is now one of the most well known musicians. Afer receiving a special award for outstanding performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland (1996) he began to garner worldwide respect at jazz festivals and jazz clubs.
Oleg Kireyev’s jazz CDs number "$een. His 2007 album “Mandala”, released by New York recording label Jazzheads, was a "first round Grammy Award nominee for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Oleg’s “Rhyme and Reason”, recorded with !e Keith
Javors Trio and followed by an intensive US to Euro–American tour, was released in May 2010.
In 2013 Javors-Kireyev tandem, well-treated by critics, proceeded working. !e musicians invited Tom Harrell, the legendary jazz trumpet player, and jazz top tiers – Ben Williams (acoustic bass, Pat Metheny Group) and EJ Strickland (drums, Ravi Coltrane band) to record the new album. «!e Meeting» CD was published in 2016 on Inarhyme Records and was taking up the top positions in the US jazz radio charts for 8 weeks. !e reputable «JazzWeek» included the album into the major jazz recordings
rating of the year.
At the present time, Oleg Kireyev holds the rank of an Advisor in Cultural Issues to the President of Bashkiria, which, however, doesn’t prevent him from massive touring the cities of Europe, the USA, Japan and Russia.
Jazz Festivals:
Montreux Jazz Festival (SH), London Jazz Festival (UK), SXSW (USA), New York Jazz
Improv (USA), Malborough Jazz Festival (UK), Liech"ld Jazz Festival (UK), 9/22/13
Birmingham Jazz Festival (UK), Klaipeda Jaz Festival (LT) and many others.