Ihor Myronovych Zakus (born 6 March 1966, Chervonohrad) is a Ukrainian bass guitarist, musician, composer, teacher, and Honoured Artist of Ukraine.
He was born and raised in Chervonohrad, Lviv region. He graduated from the Lviv Music College and the Lviv Music Academy with a degree in oboe. At the same time, he studied bass guitar, and today he is known as a bass guitarist. The styles Igor works in are jazz, funk, fusion, and rock.
Igor founded his first band Fest when he was still living in Lviv. This group released only one album: ("In the circle of friends") in 1999.
Each of Zakus's next two albums ("Dedications", 2003 and "Here was Zakus", 2006) was a breakthrough in terms of skill, better recording and new melodies that defined Igor's own style.
Ihor Zakus has collaborated with Oksana Bilozir, Taisiya Povaliy, Iryna Bilyk, and the band VIA Gra.
In February 2007, Zakus became the artistic director and co-founder of the successful JazzKolo project.
JazzKolo is known for the number of live concerts, CDs and DVDs it has released.
"JazzKolo is a project created to support Ukrainian jazz, aimed at uniting musicians and developing Ukrainian improvisational music. The project invites the best forces of the country's musical elite to participate, creating a new, unexpected, interesting musical product that is recorded on audio and video and constitutes an archive of national jazz music.
On 29.02.2008 in Lviv, in the Theatre of the Young Spectator, with the assistance of the Ukrainian Week magazine, Igor Zakus and the Z-Band performed: Dmytro Aleksandrov ("Bobin") - saxophone, Rodion Ivanov - keyboards, Oleksandr Lebedenko - percussion instruments, Denys Adu - trumpet, Volodymyr Shabaltas - solo guitar, Myron Bloshchychak - folk wind instruments. Yuriy Makarov, the magazine's editor-in-chief, said warm words about his friend Igor Zakus and the musicians. During the concert, the musicians performed songs from their albums "Dedications" (2003), "Zakus was here" (2006) and from the album "Kolomyiky" (2007). The musicians also presented their CDs and DVDs.
"The Jazz-Circle project is a series of concerts by Ukrainian jazz performers recorded on audio and video. Ukrainian jazz on DVD is a first in Ukraine. This is a great support for Ukrainian music," said Zakus during his visit to Lviv. "
From September 2017 to June 2018, the Jazz Kolo project held 5 international music projects in which musicians from Poland, Austria, Germany, Cuba and Hungary played their original improvisational music together with Ukrainian musicians.
During 2016-2018, the Jazz Kolo project held 11 all-Ukrainian jazz competitions for young performers, which brings out, stimulates and develops talented young people.
In addition to his own concerts, Ihor Zakus can be heard in international jazz projects with star European jazz musicians that take place in Ukraine every two months and abroad, not to mention numerous performances with Ukrainian artists. His name can be found on the CDs of Yulia Roma ("Heartbeats") and Natalia Lebedeva's "Paints" (2006) and "Medium Cool" (2008) albums.
Discography
1998 - "In the circle of friends"
2003 - Dedications
2006 - "Zakus was here"
2007 - "Igor Zakus, Z-Band. Kolomyiky live 2007"
2008 - "Kolomyiky"
2010 - Igor Zakus and Z-Band. "Ukrainian bass song"
2018 - "Return"
