Leo Records

Leo Records is a company specializing in jazz music independent record label with over 400 publications. Leo Records was founded in 1979 by the Soviet emigre Leo Feigin in London.

General information on the label

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 a period of isolation and compartmentalisation of cultural life in the Soviet Union began. But festivals in Moscow and Leningrad and in all parts of the country had an important communicative function for the Russian jazz scene. Although the contacts were relatively cut off to the West, it was the efforts of the German clarinetist Hans Kumpf, to promote the Moscow and Leningrad avant-garde jazz. Parallel to the efforts of Kumpf made ​​from the Emigrant Leo Feigin of London for a greater recognition of the Soviet jazz and fought against the collective purism and organized xenophobia in the Soviet cultural policy.

So Feigin founded in the late 1970s, the independent record label Leo Records as an organ for free music from his home country - in conjunction with his friend Nick Dimitriev Moscow ( 1955-2004 ). On the arrest of jazz musician Anatoly Feigin Wapirow responded by publishing an LP titled Condemned To Silence. The numerous plates published Feigin on Leo Records, aroused the interest of Russian jazz in the west and encouraged the musicians in the former USSR.

The work of Ganelin trio of Vyacheslav Ganelin, by Simon Nabatov (Spinning Songs of Herbie Nichols ), John Wolf Brennan, the quartet Pago Libre, Ivo Perelman, Carlo Actis Dato and his Brasserie Trio appears on the label of free jazz musicians such as Marilyn Crispell, Gebhard Ullmann and Anthony Braxton. Leo also released records by Hans Kumpf, Reggie Workman, Jaki Byard, Valentina Ponomareva, Misha Lobko, Vladimir Chekassin, Maggie Nicols, Sun Ra, Sainkho Namtchylak Alexei Kruglov and Amina Claudine Myers.