Home Jazz Band (Lithuania)

„Home Jazz Band“ – jazz hooligans since 2011. “The music we play can be listened to while sitting, but swing and traditional jazz is dance music, you have to dance to it.” says the band’s guitarist and vocalist Mindaugas, who is also a professional jazz dancer and teacher. We play this music because we like it and because we understand it. This makes it much easier to convince the listener as well. Early jazz music can be very diverse: dreamy, angry, joyful. That’s how we play it. We avoid jazz standards and look for rare and interesting tunes in order to educate the listener and introduce them to less heard jazz songs, which are often underestimated. From New Orleans marches and Vaudeville ragtimes to Swing Era big band music and European jazz. Jazz is everything, sometimes raw and rough, sometimes impeccably precise and clean. „Home Jazz Band“ tries to show it all – authentic and diverse.

Mindaugas Bikauskas – guitar, vocals
Marius Zaremba – clarinet
Mindaugas Vadoklis – trumpet
Augustas Baronas – drums
Denis Murašov – double bass

Mindaugas Bikauskas

Mindaugas is an international dance instructor, performer, lecturer, jazz enthusiast and a musician from Lithuania. He started dancing in 2006 at dance club “Lindyhop.lt” and helped to develop the lindy hop scene in Lithuania. Mindaugas’s biggest passion in jazz culture is the music. Being a DJ and a dancer he came up with an idea to expand jazz culture in Vilnius scene. In the winter of 2008 he started a band, consisting only of dancers – “Rhythm Junkies”, later on formed a small combo swing band “Home Jazz Five” now known as “Home Jazz Band”. Inspired by dancing his bands have different jazz era’s sounds and specialize in playing for dancers. Mindaugas says that the most important thing is to know jazz music from the inside. He is happily sharing this experience with his students.