The origins date back to the 1980s, when the country's jazz grandmaster Vladimir Chekasin formed an orchestra of those who wanted to play jazz in the jazz studio of the Lithuanian State Conservatoire at the time.

The collective became the creative laboratory of this versatile artist. During the five years of its existence, the Lithuanian State Conservatoire Big Band prepared three large programmes, which fused a wide range of jazz styles - from ragtime to avant-garde, ethnomusic, rock, various eras and musical styles.

This orchestra in the Soviet era was a kind of an oasis of freedom, cultivating out-of-the-box thinking among musicians and the audience. The jazz innovators gave more than a hundred concerts in Lithuania and abroad, and sensationally climbed to the top of the Soviet jazz polls.

The soloists of the Big Band were V.Chekasin and his pupils - saxophonists Petras Vyšniauskas and Vytautas Labutis. The rhythm section consisted of members of Chekasin's quartet: pianist Oleg Molokojedov, bassist Leonid Shinkarenko and drummer Gediminas Laurinavičius.

For many musicians, the big band led by Chekasin has become the most important vocational school. It has educated today's elite of the country's jazz elite.

In the early 1990s, the tradition of the student big band was revived at the LAMT by Eugenijus Vedeckas. Under his leadership, the big band began to appear at international festivals, inviting foreign jazz and big band music authorities for joint projects.