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Kirill Yakovlev

‘’Everything new is well forgotten old.’’

About Me

Kirill Yakovlev is a Russian-born guitar player, composer and music teacher based in Prague, Czech Republic, specializing in jazz-fusion, world, and ambient music. Kirill was born in Novosibirsk, Russia in 1988. In 2005, after moving with family to the Czech Republic, he started taking guitar classes with Josef Štepánek, a well- known Czech guitarist cooperating with top Czech pop, jazz, and folk musicians.

In 2009 Kirill was accepted to the Conservatory of Jaroslav Ježek in Prague where he successfully graduated in 2012. Leading guitarists of the Czech and European jazz scene were among his teachers - Libor Šmoldas and David Dorůžka.

In 2013 Kirill formed his original project CIRILIC, together with the double-bass player Taras Voloschuk and the saxophonist Cyrille Oswald. The band’s debut album ‘’A Golden Age’’ was recorded in Holland, together with Yonga Sun on drums, and released in 2014. It was produced by Wiboud Burkens. The album contains the music of 19th-century Russian romantic composers M. Mussorgsky, N. Rimsky-Korsakov and M. Glinka. The album also includes Kirill’s original compositions.

In 2017 Kirill’s band CIRILIC released its second album ‘’Memories of Heaven’’ which contains only Kirill’s original compositions. The album offers 11 tracks of instrumental jazz fusion, world music, and also hints of progressive and ambient or eastern European Folk music. The recording features Taras Volos, Cyrille Oswald, Miloš Klápště, Dušan Černák, Daniel Šoltis, Oskar Török, Patrick Sas, Yonga Sun and Karel Holas.

In 2018 Kirill and pianist Daniel Bulatkin (CZ/RU) formed an organ trio B/Y ORGANISM together with drummer Utsi Zimring (ISR). After a few years of cooperating together, they released their debut album ''The New Beginning'' under Austrian label Alessa Records in July 2020.

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My Jazz Story

Jazz is a synonym of freedom and natural expression for me. Meeting people from all over the world and speaking the same language - what a gift and opportunity! The inspiration can come from an unexpected place and musical situation and that's the most beautiful part of being a jazz musician. I'm enjoying being myself and telling my story through my music and improvisation and sharing the good vibes with the audience because people love to feel the authenticity in performance and it's hard to fool them - there is no need to do it. My love for jazz starts from childhood when my father used to play ragtimes by Scoot Joplin by ear - couldn't believe it's possible those days! My first strongest impression on improvisation was by Jimi Hendrix and his live performance at the Isle of Wight. Later on, after discovering John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Bill Evans music I was obsessed with their language and art form. The biggest impact on my style of playing and composing the music was many musicians from another part of the world as Paco De Lucia, Al Di Meola, Igor Stravinsky, Wes Montgomery, Zakir Hussain, Bill Frisell, Arve Henriksen, Maurice Ravel, Shai Maestro, Dave Holland, Dan Tepfer, Gilad Hekselman and many others.