Annual Russian-American Festival of Artistic Exchange and Cultural Understanding

October 25 – November 5, 2012

For Immediate Release:  September 26, 2012

Contact Ludmilla Leibman 617-512-1712, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

BOSTON: The Educational Bridge Project announces its 22nd Annual Russian-American Festival.

The 22nd festival of the Educational Bridge Project will introduce talented artists from both nations. What began as an exchange between Boston University and the St. Petersburg Conservatory has now grown to include many other academic institutions. The Project’s mission is to foster long-term relationships among musicians, composers, opera singers, visual artists, writers and filmmakers, and to develop mutual understanding between people of America and Russia.

Participants this year will be Harvard College, Wellesley College, the New England Conservatory, Boston University, the Moscow Conservatory and the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Taking place this fall in Boston, the 22nd Annual Russian-American Festival invites back a number of past participants, providing a variety of forums at which to renew collaborative performances. Young St. Petersburg pianist virtuosi will join musicians from Boston University, Harvard University, and the New England Conservatory in presenting programs of classical and contemporary music at Harvard University, Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, New England Conservatory, Steinert Hall, the Harvard Musical Association, the St. Botolph Club, and the Jewett Auditorium of Wellesley College.

Among the Russian artists will be conductor Alexander Solovyev, composer Vladimir Tarnopolski, actor Georges Devdariani, librettist Yuri Dimitrin, renowned piano pedagogue Zoryat Tsuker and her students, cellist Alexey Stadler and pianist Karina Sposobina. In addition, the music of American composers Ruth Lomon, Tony Schemmer, Matti Kovler, Nina Siniakova, and Brian Christian which was performed in St. Petersburg and Moscow during previous festivals, will be performed again this fall.

Highlights include:

  • “Sharing the Stage,” a collaborative piano concert performed by St. Petersburg Conservatory and Boston University students (BU CFA, 10/26, 7 pm) The program will include works by Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, and others.

  • A cello/piano recital of Russian music of the 19th and 20th centuries by Alexey Stadler and Karina Sposobina (Jewett Auditorium, Wellesley College, 10/27, 7 pm)

  • “A Sunday Afternoon of Music” at Lowell House, Harvard (10/28, 2 pm) preceded by the ringing of Lowell House’s Russian bells. This program performed by Alexey Grigoriev, Anna Shakina, and Yaroslava Serdobolskaya will include contemporary and classical compositions.

  • “Concerts with Historic Commentaries” – Boston composer Ruth Lomon’s musical remembrances of the concentration camps and the Jewish ghettos performed by Boston singers under the baton of the Moscow Conservatory’s conductor Alexander Soloviev with solo and ensemble performances by St. Petersburg musicians (BU CFA, 10/30, 7 pm)

  • A presentation by Bret Werb, Music Collection Curator at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, tracing the genesis and fate of We Will Never Die, a large-scale touring “propaganda pageant” created in 1943 by Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht, Broadway composer Kurt Weill and Zionist activist Peter Bergson (BU, Elie Wiesel Center, 11/5, 5 pm)