“Russian Evenings”, Youth musical festival (2011-2015)
Time of event:
January 2011 – August 2015
Official site of the project www.russianevenings.com.
Organizers:
The author and director of the project – Elena Tarasova
The Executive Director of the project – Ekaterina Gogoleva
The executive producer of the project – Maria Bakoun.
Project’s Press Release
The first Youth Music Festival “Russian Evenings” was held in April – June 2011 in the concert halls in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In anticipation of the project in the halls of the two capitals was a creative event “Cultural Bridge Moscow – St. Petersburg” (January 8 – 10 April 2011), which allowed to grab the attention of the general public for the upcoming festival, to form the audience, to introduce the actors of the project, ideas and the objectives of the festival, which main idea is the popularization of the creative heritage of Russian composers between young musicians of two capitals. This multidimensional cultural-educational project, that combined young musicians of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, had become unique cultural bridge, directing to development and reinforcement of youth art dialogue between representatives of performing schools of Saint-Petersburg and Moscow, that were founded in due time by brothers Anton and Nikolay Rubinstein.
Festival got support from leading concerts, musical and educational organizations of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. Guardian council held 19 leading representatives of art sphere, among of them were People’s artists of USSR as Vasily Lanovoy, Uriy Solomin, Rodion Nakhapetov, Vladimir Minin, People’s artists of Russian Federation as Immanuel Vitorgan, Mikhail Utkin, Tigran Alikhanov, Sergey Slonimsky, Vasily Gerello, Honored artists of Russian Federation as Margarita Kravtchenko, Pavel Nersessian.
Program of the Moscow part of the project were built on the principle of a large-scale anthology, covering the time period from Glinka to Eshpai. It’s a kind of insight into musical history; the program was accompanied by additional print annotations and musicologist’s oral stories that can make the project open and interesting to a wide audience. The relevance of this anthology lies was in the pointing of the anniversary dates of the season 2010-2011 and in performing repertory of rarities – in particular, the great composer Maestro Svetlanov’s heritage – and their inclusion in the context of contemporary music culture. Petersburg musicians were present the series of their programs in the project, introduce rarely performed compositions of classics and premieres opus of our contemporaries – young Petersburg composers.
After the end of the first festival, the organizing committee approved the strategy for further development of the project. While keeping to its previous priorities, the multidimensional project “Russian Evenings” annually presents series of concerts and events which serve the purpose of preserving the traditions and promoting the creative heritage of Russian artists, developing national musical education, preserving the enlightenment traditions, as well as concert programs to support significant cultural events. The special award “Russian Evenings. New Generation”, conceived by the organizing committee as a program for support and assistance to young musicians in their professional establishment, offers the young performers a chance to debut as part of the concert programs of the project “Russian Evenings”.
The participants of the project are the bright young artists, successfully proven in numerous music competitions, graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, soloists of concert organizations.
Program of the project and information about the participants on the official site of the project: www.russianevenings.com.