Yale Russian Chorus Alumni Performance Oct. 9, 2011
The members of the Alumni of the Yale Russian Chorus presented a wonderful performance of Russian liturgical and secular choral music at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church on Sunday, October 9, 2011at 3pm.
Those who have heard this extraordinary chorus over the years know that its performances are unique and unforgettable. The group, involving singers aged 40 to 70+ who convene from all over the country, continues a unique Russian tradition of unaccompanied men’s choral singing that reaches back through the world-famous Don Cossack choir (1925-1960) to the mid 19th century and the all-male Synodal Choir School in Moscow under the Tsars.
Combining immense physical energy with deep spirituality and stratospheric tenors with subterranean basses, the Yale Russian Chorus Alumni has consistently provided its audiences with authentic performances of traditional Russian choral music. The group’s gutsy folk and dance songs, presented along with soulful, searing classics of Russian liturgical music, are alternately haunting, pulsating, fervent, and wild. And so the group has thrilled audiences, first as students and then as alumni, throughout the US, Europe and Asia for over 50 years, carefully preserving the tradition and style brought to New Haven in 1953 by its brilliant and charismatic founder, Denis Mickiewicz.
The Chorus has made 16 trips to the USSR and Russia and performed in concerts across America, including Carnegie Hall and two appearances on “A Prairie Home Companion.” The Chorus has sung for leaders such as Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin and Charles de Gaulle. It has performed in the Moscow Conservatory and at concert halls in London, Paris and Berlin. Over the 58 years of its existence, hundreds of students and graduates of Yale have passed through the Chorus’s ranks. Many have become lawyers, businessmen, engineers, scientists and scholars, but all have remained true to their main passion – their love of Russian music.
The concert is hosted by St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Litchfield and sponsored by the Yale Club of Northwestern Connecticut through Litchfield resident Malcolm Forbes, Club President. Proceeds benefit the Club’s Scholarship Fund.
Photo by Dana Durasoff.
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