The 23^rd Military Band

The 23^d Band of the Leningrad Military District

Captain Grigory VELKO, Bandmaster and Artistic Director.
Senior Lieutenant Alexey VALYNKIN, Military Conductor.

The Band of the Leningrad Military District has a proud history stretching back to the times of the Russian Empire. It carries on the glorious traditions of the Court Music Choir, created in 1882 by the order of Emperor Alexander III and later lined-up as a court orchestra. After the October Revolution of 1917 the imperial ensemble got dismissed, with the band’s former musicians joining the future Petrograd State Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 1935, the new Exemplary Band of the Leningrad Military District was commissioned. Later, during the notorious 900-day Leningrad Siege, it was the only military band active in the city encircled by the Nazi German forces. It was in the besieged and suffering city of Leningrad that Dmitriy Shostakovitch, on August 9 1942, premiered his legendary Symphony No 7, and 16 members of the Exemplary Band were among those first musicians to perform the masterpiece.

Nowadays, reckoned to be St Petersburg’s leading military ensemble, the 23d Band of the Leningrad Military District is primarily engaged in ceremonial activities, performing alongside the Honor Guard Unit. Musicians usually accompany different high-level official events welcoming heads of foreign states and governments from all over the globe.

They also perform onstage of the Mariinsky Theater, Hermitage Theater, Dmitri Shostakovich St Petersburg Academic Philharmonia as well as St Petersburg State Academic Capella. The ensemble may always be spotted among the regular participants of the National Military Bands Festival, celebrating success in 1960, 1983, 1988, 2008, 2014 and 2019.

The band has already participated in a plethora of international festivals traveling all over the globe, from Austria, Germany and Spain to China, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

In 2020, then Senior Lieutenant Grigory Velko was appointed the head of the band, and a year later, in 2021, the ensemble got its new conductor, Alexey Valynkin.