Deep and professional are Kuban's singing traditions. From 1811 till 1921 here existed the famous Military Chorus which was, for over a hundred years now, the pride of Southern Russia and Transcaucasia. Its best traditions have been absorbed by the Kuban Cossack Chorus.
The founder of the Group, the Kuban folklorist and chorus master G. Kontsevich, wrote in 1937: 'The newly born Kuban Cossack Chorus will undoubtedly have a brilliant future. This highly artistic group will adorn our Kuban, like a bright star shedding radiance on our land".
The road to recognition and fame, however, wandered through long and hard decades of formation, errors and failures, quests and finds. In the course of its fifty-years long history the Chorus has repeatedly changed its manner of performance, structure and creative orientation.
In the course of over two decades it existed under the name of Kuban Cossack Song and Dance Ensemi whose academic manner of singile permitted it to perform, on a high artistic level, stylistically different compositions from chorus parts of Russian, West-European and Soviet to arransiements .
The Chorus of the 1950s performed folk songs arranged in a manner close to the figurative images of such items on the program as "The Echo" by Oriando Lasso, the chorus "The Night" from the opera "Demon" by A. Rubinstein, the waltz "Amur Waves", the overture to the opera "The Barber of Seville" by G. Rossini, and the popular songs "I am so Much in Love Now" by V. Muradeli, "The Lop-Eared Bunny" by Ye. Rodygin, that invariably enjoyed popularity with the viewers.
The Kuban Chorus has, since 1969, finally engaged in the genre of Russian folk choruses which radically changed the content of its repertoire. Critics at once began to bestow praise on the clear intonation of the Chorus, its balanced singing and the singers' meticulous and exquisite diction. Art director at that time was S. Chernobay, Honoured Art Worker of the Russian Federative Republic.