Dmitri Kolesnik

Dmitri Kolesnik, double-bassist & composer, is originally from St. Petersburg, Russia. Growing up in the Soviet Union, in the age of the “Iron Curtain”, he was steered towards jazz music by his father who was a mathematician, jazz fan and a piano player. Dmitri taught himself to play upright bass by listening to Willis Conover’s Voice of America Jazz Hour and transcribing from smuggled records.

Kolesnik abandoned his engineering career to become a professional musician. He graduated from Mussorgsky College of Music and began touring and recording with top Russian groups, jamming with visiting American and European musicians including Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor, Jon Faddis and Pat Metheny. However, Dmitri’s love of American Jazz made it one of his lifelong dreams to go to New York to learn first hand from great musicians there.

Kolesnik came to New York in 1991 and received a scholarship from City College of New York to study with legendary bassist Ron Carter. Since then he worked as a sideman with Benny Golson, Stanley Jordan, Anthony Wonsey, Mark Murphy, Eric Alexander, Woody Allen, Richie Cole, Nicole Henry, Harry Whitaker, Bill Ware, Johnny Colon, Bill Warfield, David Budway, Avi Rothbard, Rick Germanson, Steve Nelson, Alexis Cole, Andrei Kondakov, Chris Gillespie, Vitali Imereli and many others.