Denis Dudko

(Bass guitar)

Denis was born on November 24th 1975 in Kharkov, eastern Ukraine.

He started to play music at the age of six years, going first to specialist children's music school where he played violoncello, and then attending secondary boarding school where he was part of the “class of bass”. After school, he entered the jazz department of the Kharkov State University of Arts, where he studied jazz double-bass and bass guitar. After graduation in 1998 he taught double-bass and bass guitar at the Kharkov Music School, in the Kharkov Institute of Arts and in Kharkov Academy of Culture.

From the year 2000 Denis played in “Shid-Side”, one of the best jazz projects in Ukraine. He has also performed many times with renowned jazz masters - David Goloshekin, Igor Butman, Leonid and Nikolai Vinzkevich, Andrei Kondakov, Anatoly Gerasimov, Valery Ponomarev, and many others . In 2001 the “Soul” project he was involved with together with Vladimir Shabalta, was the winner of the Getxo jazz festival and competition in Bilbao, Spain.

In the summer of 2004 Denis became the bass guitarist of Okean Elzy. In his own words, this is how is happened: "I was just at home lying on the couch, then the phone rang. It was Svyatoslav and he asked if I wanted to try to play together, and we tried…"J

Page on MySpace: myspace.com/denysdudko