Anton Iakukhin

  Anton started his musical journey as an alumni of ‘Moscow College of Improvised Music’, with a few years of  professionally teaching drums before arriving at Los Angeles College of Music in 2018. In order to keep broadening his musical abilities as well as create new musical boundaries to push wide open, Anton creates music with as many musicians (and artists!) as possible. Right from the beginning he had several opportunities to serve the music of different students and really use the versatility in his rhythmic arsenal that inspires his musical quest. In just a short year, he played an Open House show at LACM, participated in several Songwriter showcases and recitals, and started several bands with some of the grooviest people. Since arriving, he's been performed with numerous students, alumni as well as teachers, working on jazz and rock albums currently, not to mention playing live shows in the legendary venues of Los Angeles with the most talented musicians from LACM and beyond.

  Freshman year at LACM was a whirlwind of new playing and learning experiences, and this was prime time of showcasing his professionalism by being the kind of drummer that people can rely on whether he has 3 months or 3 hours to prepare for a show. Accumulated skill set was employed par excellence to assist as many classmates’ music as possible, specifically as a cowriter, lyricist, arranger, and performer of the original music of fellow musicians and artists.  First quarter, Anton started playing/arranging for songwriters Kelsey Tang, and Gayane Ghazaryan, which enriched their musical expression because each had their unique musical vision which ranged from unusual sounds, colours and textures to a conventional groovy approach with odd twists; which enabled Anton to be even more creative on drums.  During this time he became the drummer for the rock band ‘The In-Moment’ (band outside of school, with prior student Sam Schafer), which led to several gigs at venues in and around Los Angeles such as The Whiskey a Go-Go, Tribal Cafe and Holy Grounds not to mention laying down drum tracks on their album that’s being released next year.  Besides schoolwork, practice, playing for classmates at school, and being the drummer for ‘The In-Moment’, he started a Jazz Fusion band with good friends and students Taiki Fujimura (guitar), David Byuhn (bass) and Jacob Song (keyboard/piano) named « Kindakoustek».The music includes original songs along with funky fresh arrangements of both Japanese folk music and jazz-fusion, namely Mitch Forman’s «Nimbus», and the album is going to be brought out this summer. 

         The quarters leading into sophomore year were ripe with opportunities to showcase skills Anton learned thus far with some of the most recently iconic students at LACM, namely the vocalists, songwriters, and performers Francisse Elaine, and Gabriel ‘The Growling Son’ Galang, to say nothing of Anton's activity as a performer for other musician's recitals and showcases.  By this time, enough fluency was accumulated in various styles to play according to Francisse’s needs for her first gig at The Whiskey A Go-Go in August 2018 and LACM’s open house performance In January 2019. Overall, within two quarters Anton played drums for Francisse and performed at venues such as Kulak’s Woodshed, The Whiskey a Go-Go (twice) and The Mint. 

  With Gabriel "The Growling Son" Galang, Anton was able to focus on songwriting aspects and contributed to re-arranging and composing Gabe's music as well as performing together in a trio with him on guitar and Haruhi Kobayashi on bass. The original song of the band «TOHTW» was also recorded by the producer of Godsmack Andrew Murdock at The Hobby Shop Studio, sparking work on a new album that will be released in half a year.

  When it comes to achieving professional music goals, Anton definitely highlights raising the bar of performance on drums in order to be equally fluent and consistent in both studio and live arenas, aspiring to be an original, unique, competitive and in-demand musician, contributing to the world's library of music as much as possible. 

  The ultimate artistic, professional goal Anton set is to bridge the gap in the giant chasm that separates ‘Pop Music', from ‘’music for musicians’’ (jazz and world music).  He's been advancing towards this goal by studying and mastering different genres, conceiving new music with diverse people/musicians to deliver emotional joy to the public through music in order to become a commercially successful and renown musician.