Oleg Lundstrem

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Oleg Leonidovich Lundstrem (also spelled Lundstoem, Lundström, Russian: Олег Леонидович Лундстрем; April 2, 1916, Chita — October 13, 2005, near Moscow) was a Soviet and Russian jazz composer and conductor of the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra, one of the very few officially recognized jazz bands in the Soviet Union.

Lundstrem was born to a family of musicians in Chita. His family moved to Harbin, China when he was five. In 1936, he moved to Shanghai, where he formed a jazz orchestra that immediately became popular among the public.

During World War II, he returned to the Soviet Union and settled in Kazan, where he worked as a violinist in the opera and ballet theatre, and in 1956 he became an art director and conductor of a jazz orchestra.

In 1994, the Guinness Book of Records recognized the Lundstrem band as the oldest continuously existing jazz band in the world. In 1998, he was awarded the Russian Federation State Award. He died at age 89 from natural causes at his home near Moscow.