Kharkiv Klezmer Band

The leader of the Kharkov Klezmer Band is Stanislav Raiko. A Ukrainian native, he was first inspired to the klezmer tradition by a video of a klezmer show. A classical violinist, he had to listen to recordings of old klezmer pieces in order to learn the genre, as an oppressive government and traditional education system prevented him from learning about the music by any other means. He is extremely committed to maintaining what he sees as a rapidly declining tradition in old-style clarinet playing, and Stas had to travel across the country to look through libraries for old pieces of repertoire.

Other band members include Gennady Fomin, on clarinet, Valery Polonskiy on accordion, Mikhail Krupnikov on vocals and tambourine, and Abbas Zulfugarov on double bass.