Transcending Borders

September 1, 2025

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Ilya Toshinskiy’s Unlikely Path to Becoming a Top Nashville Session Musician

In conversation with bluegrass artist Ilya Toshinskiy, one of the first things you notice after his dry and easy wit is his unusually accented English. Growing up as he did in a small city near Moscow, of course you’d expect to hear Russian inflections in his speech. But then, you clearly pick up the Tennessee twang underneath certain words, especially words like bluegrass. “People here call me a Russian hillbilly,” he laughs.

Toshinskiy, a longtime member of Local 257 (Nashville, TN), has been a fixture of the Nashville studio scene since he immigrated to the US in the late 1990s, contributing his distinctive banjo and guitar playing to tracks by a wide variety of country, bluegrass, and pop artists, and picking up a host of awards along the way.

How he landed in Nashville is an interesting story in itself, proving that music—and American bluegrass in particular—really does transcend national borders and widely differing cultures.

From Russia with Bluegrass

So just how does a Russian kid discover bluegrass? “I was lucky on two counts,” answers Toshinskiy, recalling his upbringing in the city of Obninsk, a few hours southwest of the Russian capital of Moscow. “One was to be born when I was, and the other was to grow up where I did.”

Toshinskiy says his formative musical years were mostly between 1988 and 1992, and Obninsk at the time was culturally pretty hip. “The US and Russia were a lot closer back then than they are now, and we got exposed to more American culture than Russian kids nowadays.”

Of course, American pop and rock music were a global phenomenon, and Toshinskiy grew up listening to the same music that American kids were dancing to. But that still doesn’t answer the question of how bluegrass got into the mix—especially for a Russian youth who started off studying classical guitar at age 10.

“My older brother Vladimir had a sixth sense that I would be good at music, and he convinced my parents to let me do it,” Toshinskiy remembers. “Beginning on the guitar was a fundamental moment in my life.” He made quick progress under his guitar teacher Alexey Gvozdev, seeming to be a natural at the instrument.

That isn’t to say that he was instantly obsessed with it. “To be honest, I was only marginally excited about classical guitar,” he chuckles. “But Alexey was obsessed with bluegrass. And that’s where I heard the banjo for the first time.”

He says he immediately resonated with the distinctive sound of the banjo, the way the notes rang on the instrument, and he quickly fell in love. “It seemed like a natural fit, and also it felt effortless. At the time, I had no idea how it would shape my life, but I was excited to share it with the world.”

Discovery of the banjo led the young Toshinskiy to start exploring the music of American artists like Earl Scruggs and Bela Fleck, also a member of Local 257. “Country and bluegrass are not really popular in Russia, especially now. But back then there were some big festivals where they even got in some European performers. So, I got to hear professional banjo players in action,” Toshinskiy says.

Bering Strait’s Journey West

That early adaptation to bluegrass led to the next unlikely step: forming a Russian bluegrass band—sometimes jokingly referred to as “redgrass”—in Toshinskiy’s hometown. Under his teacher’s guidance, he was joined by four fellow Gvozdev students. And thus, was born Bering Strait (originally called Cheerful Diligence, until the band members permanently moved to the US).

“We were pretty young, like 10 or 11, but we were enthusiastic,” Toshinskiy remembers. “We played country and bluegrass, but we were pretty heavily influenced by Russian bands. Our teacher put us together, and he also acted as our manager, booking gigs for us. We had a great run, with TV exposure and playing at festivals throughout Russia.”

Cheerful Diligence became very popular across the country, even performing in a government-organized concert at the North Pole in 1994.

The band started getting interest from the US around 1996, Toshinskiy says, which led to more notoriety, including American tours and an appearance on the TV news show 60 Minutes. Their first recording contract followed soon after they were heard by producer Brent Maher, who was known for his work with the American country duo The Judds.

Bering Strait’s first album was a self-titled work on which Toshinskiy played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and banjo. A track from the album earned them a Grammy nomination.

After their second album in 2006, however, the band spit up, says Toshinskiy. “Gvozdev didn’t want to be in the US and had gone back home a few years before. But I decided to stay.”

A Career as Nashville’s “Finish Carpenter”

Armed with a work visa, Toshinskiy quickly established himself on the Nashville music scene as reliable, adaptable, and a quick study.

“Coming to America was surprisingly easy,” he says. “If you treat everyone with respect, you get that back.” Culturally, he says, the US was a natural fit for him. “I grew up on Hollywood movies like Back to the Future and Nightmare on Elm Street, so I had a feeling of anticipation of what the US would look like, for better or worse.”

His biggest challenge, actually, was his language skills. He laughs at that admission, leading him off on a brief tangent: “Growing up in Russia, we took public school English. I also had a private tutor who was supposedly the guru of English in my hometown. But we were working on the ‘Tennessee Waltz,’ and he translated it as ‘Ten Sea Walls.’ Needless to say, the record label folks asked us what we were singing about. I had to go back to the drawing board and get rid of the bad habits I got from these Russian teachers.”

Banjo and guitar aren’t Toshinskiy’s only instruments: He also plays mandolin, dobro, bouzouki, or as he says, “really, anything with strings.” That versatility has made him indispensable on bluegrass and country music tracks. His studio credits list working with the biggest names in the genre, including Local 257 members Blake Shelton, Keith Urban, and Brooks & Dunn as well as George Strait of Local 433 (Austin, TX).

Toshinskiy’s work has also earned him a long list of awards: he is a five-time winner of the MusicRow Award for Best Guitar Player, and a two-time winner of the coveted Academy of Country Music Specialty Instrument(s) Player of the Year. He is also, by his own reckoning, one of the most recorded guitar player in the world.

“That’s a shout out to Nashville and how many records we put out,” he adds.

In the Studio vs. On the Road

Toshinskiy says he enjoys playing live, but the studio is where he has mostly built his career. “I’ve been playing live since I was 10,” he says. “After I got to Nashville I did some road work. My top-tier live stuff was with Faith Hill. But for me, the studio is where it’s at. You get the instant gratification from playing live, but also, being a ‘hired gun’ in a live setting is like putting all your eggs in one basket, tied to one act. Being in the studio, on the other hand, you get to work with some of the best musicians in the world and amazing engineers. It’s hard to beat.”

Which isn’t to say he would never go on tour again. “That’s something I might consider as I get older, especially if it’s something high-profile,” he says. That said, he admits that being on the road is hard, and stressful. “I also have a fiancé and two kids. It’s tough to think of leaving them behind.”

Toshinskiy also enjoys the flow of a typical studio day. “It’s kind of like the construction business,” he explains. “The producer is the general contractor, and I’m what you’d call a finish carpenter. I do the trim work,” he laughs.

He points out that the process is very different from how it was when he started 20 years ago. “Back then, there were maybe five producers that controlled the entire output of Nashville. These days the hiring process is a lot more fragmented,” he says.

A typical day involves two or three sessions of three-hour blocks each, with meal breaks. “You do have cartage. They bring in all your equipment and set it up for you. So, you show up, listen to the demo, and talk with the producer and artist to understand the vibe,” he says.

One of the most important aspects of a successful session musician, says Toshinskiy, is being quick. “You have to hit it and be creative, develop a knack for catching what represents the artist well. Sometimes they love it, but sometimes they don’t, and you have to come up with something else pretty quickly.”

If all this sounds stressful, he says that’s part of the challenge. “It’s a great life, but it’s also very competitive. There’s always a hot new producer, and new talent. All you can do is try to get better at your craft,” says Toshinskiy.

More Than Music: Union and Real Estate

The Federation has been a big component in improving on that craft. “I joined the AFM as soon as I got my work visa, around 1998,” he remembers. “That was right when I started playing my first sessions, with Brent Maher producing Bering Straits’ first album. Then, he got me booked on my first master session, a Kenny Rogers hit, ‘Buy Me a Rose’.”

Many years later, Toshinskiy says the thing he appreciates the most is the set guaranteed earnings. “There’s a regulated session scale, so you know exactly what you’re gonna make, along with pension contributions. These financial protections are the most important thing for pretty much every session musician. Much of our work comes informally through word of mouth, so it’s important that we have the ability to negotiate collectively in a capitalist world where there is sometimes this tension between employer and employees.”

Suddenly realizing the conversation has turned serious, he adds with another laugh, “Also, we get nice parking benefits.”

When not in the studio, Toshinskiy indulges in his other passion: real estate. “I got great advice early on from big session players who told me they made most of their money in real estate development,” he says. It was a big learning curve. “I had no financial education, no credit history, no idea how to get a mortgage, and no understanding of the immigration implications,” he laughs. “But it turned out that I had a pretty good knack for it.”

Like music, he says real estate is also creative, but in a different way. “It’s a great yin to the yang of music. I’m fortunate to enjoy a good stable career and royalty streams, but it’s never a bad idea to have something else to fall back on,” he says.

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