Arkady Shilkloper

Born in Moscow in 1956, Arkady Shilkloper began playing the alto horn, a brass instrument from the saxhorn family, at the age of six and switched to the French horn at the age of eleven. He later studied at the Moscow Gnessin Music Academy, became a member of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra in 1978 and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in 1985, with which he toured extensively internationally. From 1988 onwards, he devoted more time to his fascination with jazz and recorded the first Russian album for the ECM label (»Wave of Sorrow«) with Mikhail Alperin and Sergey Starostin in the newly founded Moscow Art Trio, which was released in 1989. The album, which was followed by further recordings by the three musicians, was a great success with its mixture of jazz, Eastern and Western European folk music and classical music and also gave the trio a ticket to the major jazz festivals in Europe. Arkady Shilkloper's transcriptions of contemporary instrumental techniques on alphorn and French horn and his collaborations with artists such as Rabih Abou-Khalil, Bob Stewart, Lionel Hampton and Vladimir Volkov also distinguish him as an outstanding musician.