Sergey Starostin
Soviet and Russian musician
Sergey Nikolaevich Starostin (Russian: Сергей Николаевич Старостин; born 1 January 1956 in Moscow) is a Russian folk and jazz composer and performer of Sámi and Tuvan folk music. He sings and plays the kalyuka, overtone flute, svirel, pyzhatka, reed instruments and gusli.
Biography
In his early childhood, Starostin sang in a boys choir led by Vadim Sudakov. He started to play clarinet in school, and later graduated from Merzlyakov college of music, and then from the Moscow Conservatory. After graduation, he switched to playing folk instruments. By mid-90s, he collaborated with jazz musicians Mikhail Alperin and Arkady Shilkloper, forming a Moscow Art Trio group, and mixing together jazz and traditional music. In his songs, Starostin avoids harmonising, staying within certain scales rather than sticking to chord patterns, which makes jazz played this way more "compatible" with traditional folk music. As of 2011, Starostin moved from jazz and rock compositions back to traditional folk performances.
He participated in folk music research expeditions, and recorded thousands of songs. In 1991, Starostin produced a series of TV programs called World Village, and as of 2008, runs a different program named Wanderings of a musician on Russia-K. In 2006, he worked as a producer for the animated feature film Prince Vladimir.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sergey Starostin” is soviet and Russian musician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sergey, Starostin and Soviet, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1451229. VIAF identifies the subject as 12502368. The Library of Congress control number is no2001032803. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2011, 1991 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sergey Starostin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.