Mel Bay's Complete Bailalaika Book
Born in 1946 in England of mixed Polish-English background, Bibs Ekkel is both musician and linguist. His career as one of very few outstanding professional balalaika players outside Russia has brought him much recognition worldwide, including in the balalaika’s Motherland, where he has performed on radio and TV as well as at Moscow’s prestigious “Hall of Columns” and “Tchaikovsky Hall”. In addition to concerts, cabarets, recordings, movie soundtracks, radio and TV he has had speaking and playing roles in many films and BBC-TV productions, where he has also worked as advisor on Romany or Russian themes for movies such as: The Man Who Knew Too Little; The Saint; Yasha the Liar. He has lectured on Balalaika, Russian Gypsy music and language at a variety of US Universities, co-authored a BBC radio educational series and written and presented programs on another pet subject, the Russian singer Peter Lescenco, for BBC World Service. Other instruments he plays include: domra, guitar, garmoshka, piano, and gusli. Apart from solo balalaika albums and various recordings fro record libraries he has recorded several albums with his group “Tziganka”. This highly successful emigre music and dance ensemble has been touring internationally, performing concerts and cabaret, since he founded it in 1975. Some of the group’s records have been issued on such labels as “Russkiy disk”, Moscow, CBS Israel and “Decca”, London.