July 3

Berklee College of Music has a long history of collaborating with numerous international partners and festivals to present top talent at high profile venues around the world. Additionally, these opportunities allow the college to discover exceptional new talent and award them scholarships to support their studies at Berklee. One such venue was the JazzQ Festival in St. Peterburg, Russia. In July 2006, through the generous support of Sergei Kremensky, a Berklee group performed at the festival and the college award the first Sergei Kremensky Endowed Scholarship (covering tuition and housing for four years of study) to tenor saxophonist Oleg Ostapchuk.

Having completed his second year of study in Jazz Composition at Berklee, Oleg is returning to St. Petersburg to perform music with his new quartet. The group features pianist Evgeny Lebedev (Moscow, Russia), bassist Shinichiro Sakaino (Tokyo, Japan) and drummer Mark Whitfield, Jr. (Jersey City, NJ, USA). Collectively, the members of the quartet have a wealth of stellar performance credentials including Panama Jazz, North Sea Jazz, Montreal Jazz, JVC Jazz in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The group will perform new original compositions, which demonstrate a fusion of styles and cultures from funk and r&b to contemporary jazz and eastern European ethnic music.