The Pushkin Klezmer Band is a Jewish orchestra from Kiev, featuring Ukrainian and Russian musicians of various musical backgrounds. Pushkin's repertoire includes modern and traditional arrangements of Jewish, Romani, and Moldovan folklore, as well as street songs from Odessa and the Caucasus. A century ago, this was the shared musical language of the peoples of Bessarabia and southern Ukraine, a kind of jazz. Today, Pushkin continues this tradition and makes it new. At weddings, parties, and concerts, in synagogues and in the streets, whether performing for intelligentsia babushkas or cosmopolitan hipsters, they always incite the crowd to dance.
Pushkin is the brainchild of clarinetist Mitya Gerasimov. Born and raised in Russia’s Tatarstan, in 2008 Mitya went south to Odessa, in pursuit of love, warmth, and klezmer. He finally found this magical troika six months later, in Kiev. Soon Mitya discovered a gift for singing and after just a year, Kiev was calling him the king of chanson. In 2010 a new collective was born, performing klezmer music as it hadn’t been played in years.
Pushkin’s klezmorim have performed at some of the best venues in Ukraine, Europe, and Israel, at klezmer and jazz festivals in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Slovakia and Russia, and with such diverse artists and groups like David Krakauer, Frank London, DJ Socalled, The Klezmatics, Čači Vorba, The Shuk, and many others.