Alumni from the Yale Russian Chorus, a storied all-male singing group that specializes in Russian and Slavic songs, will perform at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church (3916 Locust Walk) on the Penn campus on Saturday, April 18.
A small group of students studying Russian at Yale started the chorus in the 1950s, during the early days of the Cold War when more Americans were trying to understand the culture and people of the then Soviet Union. The group took its first of many trips to Russia in 1958 where members performed impromptu concerts on Moscow street corners. They were soon dubbed “Yale’s singing ambassadors.”
Under the musical direction of co-conductors Brock Holmes and Bruce Lieberman, Saturday’s concert will be a rare opportunity to enjoy seldom-performed Russian and Eastern European musical masterpieces for male-voice choir. “Expect powerful music, thrilling solos, exceptional ensembles, and top-notch musicianship,” according to a press release from the chorus.
The chorus sings folk and religious music in Russian, other Slavic and East European languages, and occasionally in English. Its repertoire includes works by Kastalsky, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky.
The chorus has performed at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Salle Pleyel in Paris, Carnegie Hall in New York, and at the Berlin Wall, among many other venues. This will be their first concert ever in Philadelphia.
Two of the chorus members, Barry Rubin and John Francis, live in the Garden Court neighborhood in West Philadelphia. They were members of the original chorus as Yale undergraduates and have continued to sing with the alumni group. Both John and Barry are specialists in Russian language and literature. Barry, who works as a translator, taught at Stony Brook University and collaborated closely with his friend Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel Laureate writer and poet. John is a linguist and has lived and worked in Russia and the Soviet Union.
The concert gets underway at 7 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets at the door are $15, $10 students and a maximum of $30 per family.
Here is the chorus performing at the Duke University Chapel in 2009:
April 11th, 2015 at 2:16 pm
Oh, hear these guys if you possibly can! When I was in grad school at UC Berkeley, a friend of mine who had been a member when he was at Yale, who was living in Alaska, wrote me that he was joining them for the West Coast part of an upcoming tour, and would I like to hear them? I went to their two concerts in the Bay Area, where they announced that they were forming a local offshoot not restricted to Yale alumni.
I auditioned, was accepted, and joined Slavyanka. about 40 years later I still have some of my best musical memories from that.