"History" Aquarium International

The first appearance of Aquarium as an international group was on the stage of the well-known Royal Albert Hall of London in May, 2008. The concert had aroused the interest of the English speaking audience and was an unprecedented debut success.

Subsequently the group appeared with a similar line-up of participants in Dublin, Ireland. Next in the series was a benefit concert conducted in Kiev, Ukraine, where the goal was to attract public attention to the problems of children's orphanages. Each member of the audience was given an opportunity to make a donation in favor of the orphans. The Kiev performance finalized the name of this Boris Grebenshikov project as Aquarium International. Aside from the permanent members of Aquarium, musicians from the USA, Britain, Ireland, India and Poland are included into this international group.

Unlike their usual performance line-up, the musical palette of Aquarium International includes exotic instruments in addition to the classical set. Some of the instruments employed are Delaware lap steel guitar, Irish bagpipes, traditional Indian sitar, tabla, sarangi, bina, Chinese erhu, and suka, an ancient Polish string instrument.

Boris Grebenshikov: "We always use many more instruments during our studio recording sessions that we do during live performances. This spring for the first time we had an opportunity to play Aquarium songs completely live, without resorting to samples, in other words preserved instrumental parts".

The unique repertoire of Aquarium International is comprised of classical Aquarium compositions as well as new songs written for the group's new album.

Boris Grebenshikov: "The performance at Royal Albert Hall showed that this is an excellent idea, and all the musicians involved in that concert are willing and able to further develop this undertaking. And so an idea was born to perform this program in a number of other European, and world capitals. One of our most important intentions is to play a concert at Carnegie Hall."