Igor Butman

b. November 1961, Leningrad, USSR. Encouraged in music from a very early age by his father, an amateur drummer and singer, Butman first took piano lessons although he really wanted to be a drummer. At the age of 11, however, a music teacher persuaded him to take up the clarinet. He was briefly at the Rimsky-Korsakov College of Music, but then studied alto saxophone with Gennedy Golstain at the Mussorgsky School of Music in the mid- to late 70s. At the end of the decade he was in a band led by multi-instrumentalist David Goloshchokin. He then played in the big band led by Oleg ...