AVIA () is a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

/Russian

experimental pop Experimental pop is pop music that cannot be categorized within traditional musical boundaries or which attempts to push elements of existing popular forms into new areas. It may incorporate experimental music, experimental techniques such as m ...

band formed in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

in 1986. AVIA released four studio albums and led the first wave of the Soviet bands which made their breakthrough in the West in the late 1980s.

Band history

AVIA was formed in September 1985 by the ex-members of Strannye Igry, multi-instrumentalists Nikolai Gusev, Alexey Rakhov and drummer Alexander Kondrashkin who were joined by Anton Adasinsky (guitars, vocals), saxophonists Elena Bobretsova and Alexey Merkushev, and performance artist Marat Timergazov who, supported by the ever growing cast of dancers and gymnasts created a peculiar mass pantomime comprising elements of 1920s constructivism, sports parades and the early Soviet visual culture clichés. Equally eclectic was the band's style, a mix of new wave rock, quasi-classical marches and

synthpop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s ...

. In 1987 AVIA received the special Press Award at the Rock Panorama musical festival and featured in Alexey Uchitel's film "Rock". The group's first album, the studio recording of their concept stage performance ''Из жизни композитора Зудова'' (From the Life of Composer Zudov) remained unreleased. After the release of ''АВИА Всем!'' (AVIA to Everybody!), formally a debut, but in effect, the second album, they gave concerts in

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

and

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

and started to appear on the Soviet TV. Anton Adasinsky departed in 1988 to form his own Дерево (Tree) Theatre and was replaced by Dmitry Tyulpanov and saxophonist Yevgeny Zhdanov. The line-up of the brass section changed too. The extensive European tour was followed by the international release of their debut: ''AVIA'' came out on Hannibal Records in England and received a 4 out of 5 stars rating from the ''

Q magazine ''Q'' was a British popular music magazine. It was founded in 1986 by broadcast journalists Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, who were presenters of the BBC television music series ''The Old Grey Whistle Test''. ''Q'' was published in print in the ...

''. Instrumental in this was the then

Pink Floyd Pink Floyd are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experiments ...

manager

Peter Jenner Peter Julian Jenner (born 3 March 1943) is a British music manager and a record producer. Jenner, Andrew King and the original four members of Pink Floyd were partners in Blackhill Enterprises. Early career Peter Jenner is the son of Will ...

. In 1991 the band went into hiatus (with Rakhov joining N.O.M. and Zhdanov playing with ethnic jazz combo Sambkha). In 1994 Gusev, Rakhov and Zhdanov reunited to record ''Песни о природе и любви'' (Songs of Nature and Love). 1996's ''Жизнь после жизни'' (Life After Life) proved to be AVIA's final studio work, although the band have re-united for numerous live concerts since.

Line-up

Current

* Nikolai Gusev – vocals, keyboards * Alexey Rakhov – saxophone,

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

, flute, vocals * Yevgeny Zhdanov – saxophone, flute, vocals * Viktor Vyrvich – drums, percussion * Anton Adasinsky – vocals, trumpet,

pantomime Pantomime (; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment, generally combining gender-crossing actors and topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or ...

, stage performance * Veronika Berashevich – baritone sax * Lydia Kopina – accordion* Alexey Lanskoy – stage performance, declamations

Past members

* Alexander Kondrashkin – drums,

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

e, percussion * Ivan Fedenko- drums, percussion * Yevgeny Skoblov – trumpet, vocals * Valery Kuteynikov – trombone * Alexay Merkushev – saxophone, vocals * Elena Bobretsova – saxophone, vocals * Tatyana Mironova – saxophone * Alexander Nemkov – bass guitar * Dmitry Tyulpanov – vocal, pantomime * Marat Timergazov – stage performance

Discography

* ''AVIA to Everybody!'' (АВИА Всем!, Мелодия, 1988) * ''AVIA'' (Hannibal, 1990 – the debut album's international release // RDM Co. Ltd./F records, 1995) * ''Hurray!'' (Ура!, General Records, 1995) * ''Songs of Nature and Love'' (Песни о природе и любви, General Records, 1995) * ''Life After Life'' (Жизнь после жизни, 1996)

References

External links

* {{Authority control Soviet rock music groups Musical groups from Saint Petersburg Russian experimental musical groups Russian new wave musical groups Musical groups established in 1986