Victor Solomin

About Victor Solomin (bandleader of Solominband ): I was born in the country of mountains, rivers and dzhigits near the Caspian Sea. There I graduated from the music school with bayan and spesialized school with domra. There I decided that domra is an instrument of the future and I still stick to this illusion. Then a train brought me to Kharkov and I entered the HII Kharkov Institute of Arts. After that I spent a couple of years in Moscow in “Russia” ensemble under the tactful direction of Lyudmila Zykina. When I got tired of this tactful direction of “the golden voice of Russia”, in a railway carriage 13 I left for Kharkov again, where successfully worked for three years in the same Institute of Arts as a teacher. The success was so great that in 1997 I left for the “decaying Europe” as a free-lance musician. Far from my motherland, in sunny Holland, I recorded my first four discs and met the aborigins: Y. Bashmet, V. Slobodyanik, V.Spivakov, V. Gergiev. The aborigins were satisfied with the acquaintance and still boast of this fact. Then I spent three years in Prague, where I started conquering jazz and where my first disc with jazz elements was recorded. In 2004 I made my own jazz project SOLOMINBAND which still keeps making the Ukrainian listener happy.

About Solominband: In May 2004 in a hoarse twilight of Kiev jazz dungeons SOLOMINBAND " appeared " this was the name given to the newly-made band by his ‘old-hand’ leader Victor Solomin. The same year in July a new program “TATARSKY STAN” (“The Tatar Camp”) was presented to the experienced audience, which filled the “44” art-club, and the listeners were really impressed by the richness of timbre colours, scope and virtuosity of composition and breath-taking alternation of jazz, rock and ethno. Up to the present moment the talented musicians of SOLOMINBAND have made two more programs: “THE RAIN” (instrumental variations on Sting’s music) and “THE BIG JAZZ PROGRAM” which includes world jazz hits and compositions by Victor Solomin and Alexey Bogolyubov. At one of the concerts of the band a famous jazz-man Alexey Kogan spoke with real youthful ardour about domra as a phenomenon ruining all the theories of jazz and non-jazz instruments. He cleared out that “domra is not a bassoon” and that a real domrist, as known, sings and plays what he sees. Bowing to this words, there is one more thing to add: it would be good for domrists to be able to hear.

At least the way Victor Solomin does. Roman Yusipey (“The Profile”)

Awards

Second Prize at The Competition of the Folk Music Instruments, Russia.
First Prize at The International Competition of Performers of Folk Instruments, Ukraine.
Member of Nederlandse Toonkunstenaarsbond (Society of Dutch Musicians).
Member of Genootschap van Nederlandse Componisten (Union of Dutch Composers).
Grant holder of Heinrich Böll Foundation (Germany)

Gear

Domra. It's a mandolin-like instrument with a rich history of musical development, that allows, unlike mandolin, to play technical very sophisticated and deep compositions.