Maxim Vladimirovich Piganov was born in 1964 in Kaliningrad.
In 1980 he graduated from the Glière Music School, trombone class of the distinguished teacher Gennady A. Nosov.
In 1984 he graduated from the Kaliningrad Regional Music College, trombone class of Vladimir A. Voronkov (now the Kaliningrad Rachmaninov Regional College of Music).
In 1989 he graduated from the State Conservatoire of the Lithuanian SSR, Order of Friendship of Peoples, in Vilnius (now the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre), also in the trombone class, under Tauras Adomavičius.
From 1980 to 1984 he served in the Band of the Headquarters of the Baltic Fleet under Lieutenant‑Colonel Vadim P. Drozhzhin.
In 1981 he made his debut with Viktor Avdeyev’s orchestra Rhythm. In the same year he founded the Kaliningrad Dixieland, with which, as leader, he toured the Baltic region and other cities of the USSR. Kaliningrad Dixieland took part in numerous jazz festivals in Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Tyumen, Rostov‑on‑Don, Kryvyi Rih, Odessa, Vitebsk, Minsk, Palanga, Riga, Birštonas, Olsztyn, Flensburg, and elsewhere.
In 1995 Maxim Piganov was awarded a medal as a laureate of the All‑Union Review of Amateur Art. At the 1988 Birštonas‑88 festival in Lithuania his Dixieland received the diploma Best Dixieland of the Festival and was recorded on the festival LP. At the 1990 Riga festival he was named Best Trombonist of the Festival. In 1993 the audio cassette Sarancha, featuring the Kaliningrad Dixieland, was released in Flensburg (Germany).
Under his direction the ensemble appeared at all major festivals and concerts in Kaliningrad Region and by 1986 had become one of the leading Dixieland bands in the USSR.
Since 1995 the Kaliningrad Dixieland has worked under the auspices of the Kaliningrad Regional Philharmonic, and the group existed for a total of seventeen years. From 1999 to 2001 Piganov worked under contract for the US‑Norwegian company NCL, whose cruise liners hosted major jazz festivals. During this period he played with the legendary orchestras of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Guy Lombardo, and Les Brown, as well as with the Gerry Mulligan Ensemble, and collaborated with such jazz greats as Frank Foster, George Benson, Richie Cole, Randy Brecker, Toots Thielemans, Billy Cobham, George Duke, Wynton Marsalis, Valery Ponomarev, Shirley Horn, and others.
At one festival he met American trumpeter Bob Masteller, owner of the jazz club The Jazz Corner. In 2000–2001 Piganov performed regularly with Masteller’s quintet at this club and in cities in South Carolina and Georgia. In 2000 they recorded the album Bob Masteller and Friends, featuring Maxim Piganov (Hilton Head, SC, USA).
After returning to Russia, Piganov successfully auditioned for the Igor Butman Orchestra and moved from Kaliningrad to Moscow. From 2001 to 2007 he was a soloist with the orchestra and took part in all of the big band’s major performances, including a concert at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2003, a performance on the island of Elba with Yuri Bashmet’s orchestra, the Triumph of Jazz festivals, and others.
Since autumn 2002 he has combined his work with the orchestra with the project Broadway in Moscow (the musical 42nd Street).
In August 2005 he became a soloist with the legendary Moscow big band, the Oleg Lundstrem Jazz Orchestra (under Georgy Garanian).
In 2006 he recorded with the George Garanian Big Band for the album Caravan (Moscow).
In 2006 he appeared as a soloist with the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra in the Great Hall of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory.
In 2007 he left the Igor Butman Orchestra, making the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra his principal ensemble. Since 2010 he has served as conductor of the Oleg Lundstrem Jazz Orchestra.
In 2007 he founded the jazz ensemble Trombone Show, which continues to appear successfully at jazz festivals in Russia and abroad.
In February 2018 the ensemble’s concert Non‑Standard Standards in the Concert Hall of the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music was a great success.
Maxim Piganov’s Trombone Show is a frequent guest on radio and television programmes such as Pole chudes, When There Is Not Enough Jazz on Radio Rossii, Boris Alekseev’s Night Broadcast on Ekho Moskvy, and various music programmes on the TV channel Kultura, Radio Kultura, Moskva 24, and Nashe Radio.
In summer 2010 Radio Svoboda broadcast a programme about The Trombone Show in the series Over the Barriers with Ivan Tolstoy.
