The Nick Levinovsky Big Band

Like so many behind the Iron Curtain, Nick Levinovsky was introduced to jazz at the age of 13 when he discovered and started listening (surreptitiously via short wave radio) to Willis Conover's Voice of America jazz broadcasts. From a musical family -- both of his parents were opera singers -- he was expected to take the classical route to a musical career. But after being exposed to jazz, he was hooked on America's music and there was no looking back. As the political climate in the U.S.S.R. began to thaw and jazz began to move out of the underground, Levinovsky moved to Mosc...