Dear friends,

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your extraordinary support of the EBP’s 20th festival.  The day before yesterday we had our last two events at Tufts University, and yesterday our remaining participants left for St. Petersburg.  They were absolutely wonderful - in concerts, talks, discussions, and in communications with people here, in Boston.

One of the most significant events of the festival was an evening at Roman Totenberg's home.  The almost 101 year-old violinist was very touched by the way the young St. Petersburg musicians played music of his friends, composers Darius Milhaud (France), Karol Szymanowski (Poland), and Leonard Bernstein (US). He was thrilled to see again his old friend, famous molecular biologist and amateur violinist, Mark Ptashne.  After the concert Roman told me (in perfect Russian, one of ten languages he speaks fluently), "Ludmilla, let's do it again some time."  I promised him that next fall we will do it again and he promised me to host the evening.

Impeccably beautiful were the concerts of classical and contemporary music organized at Harvard’s Mather House, (thank you, Carl Erikson, Emma Wood and Anton Chaevitch) and Lowell House (thank you, Professors Eck and Austin and Beth Terry), the Composers Seminar at Tufts (thank you, John McDonald), the concerts of electronic music at NEC, Berklee, Boston University and Harvard (thank you, Matti Kovler, Ramon Castillo, Jody Diamond, Maria Gapotchenko, Ivan Eubanks, and Vlada Dorfman), and the music by today's composers from Boston and St. Petersburg presented at the Harvard Musical Association (Matti Kovler, Tony Schemmer and Anton Tanonov). All played to full houses.

Among the festival's highlights were two concerts by youngsters of the Sharon Music Academy and the New England Piano Teachers Association. You should have seen the five and eight- year-olds, first playing and then listening to more difficult compositions played by older students - the 12 and 14-year olds, and later- to the awesome performance by professionals Alexandra Carlson and Elena Ioannesyan (thank you Tanya Schwartzman, Irina Gelman and Tatyana Dudochkin).

Thank you, dear Vita Paladino and Sean Noel of the BU Gotlieb Archival Research Center, for continuing your collaboration with the Educational Bridge Project, and for giving such a heartfelt introduction to our event there.

Off stage, the after-concert tour of Symphony Hall following a BSO concert of Haydn and Wagner (thank you, Martin Burlingame and Robert Kirzinger) and tours of Boston University, Boston College and the New England Conservatory showed Boston’s best (thank you Rosty Brichko, Vladimir Groysman and Kevin Carleton). My deep gratitude goes to our fantastic performers who donated their art to the Educational Bridge Project - Alexandra Carlson, Elena Ioannisyan and Yelena Dudochkin, and to Dana Mazurkevich and Sophie Vilker for welcoming our young violinists at their studios and homes and for arranging with Marco Coppiardi Violin Studio to loan his violin to Alexandra Korobkina.

And, of course, my grateful thanks go to our generous hosts - Audrey and Lenny Berman, Michael Gruenbaum, Tony Schemmer, Vladimir Taytslin, Barbara Tornow, Diana Vinkovetsky and Leonid Perlovsky and to our terrific drivers without whom we would have not been able to get around - Larisa Aizenberg, Audrey Berman, Barbara Tornow, Vladimir Taytslin, Igor Starobinets, Roman Baran, Bob Bray and Boris Katsev.

I am thrilled that so many people collaborated to bring such beautiful music to so many. 

Ludmilla