Duo Zhaleika

Duo Zhaleika presentes you the unique project of classical music under the influence of ancient Russian folklore. Our duo consists of two people who dedicated their whole lifes to music in all its guises. We are Anton and Eva and before ending up in Amsterdam we traveled very long distances and lived as nomads.

Eva was born in the western heart of Siberia where besides of Russian folklore with its traditional vocal and dances she explored the culture of the indigenous people calling themselves Khanti.

Anton Jakimenko was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan which is in the middle of Central Asia. As an ancient culture, Uzbekistan has a large variety of music styles and musical instruments and absorbed all the musical styles around the world throughout the centuries. Being surrounded by all kinds of music through his parents Anton decided to take the path and dedicate his life to music starting as a young child.

Later on we began to study classical and jazz music and found out that the culture in which we grew up speaks through us. Therefore we started to experiment and mix our personal cultural background with western academic music. These experiments led us from the ancient medieval Russian songs to the classical composers such as Stravinsky. It is a hidden world of melancholic, lyrical singing and the cheerful playing of the wind instruments. The same as the Russian classical composers of the late 19th and early 20th century, such as Borodin, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky and many others, we are looking for the source of inspiration. Duo ‘Zhaleika’ invites you on August 31th to a journey to dive in a very broad exotic performance, ranging from the virtuoso orchestral fragments to the melancholic singing of the Russian folklore songs.

Eva Matveeva - flute
Anton Jakimenko - clarinet