Slavyanka Chorus Inc

We intend to bring that rich and extensive repertoire in all its diversity to American audiences, and to increase its performance by other choirs. We also intend to use that music as a bridge to create deeper cross-cultural understanding and appreciation between the peoples of Russia and the United States.

Our key strategies are as follows:

Concerts. As one of the very few choirs in America to focus on this extraordinary and compelling repertoire, we give concerts to a wide variety of audiences, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, but also with concert tours domestically and internationally. At these concerts, we make special efforts not only to provide translations of the texts, but to use each piece as a window into Russian culture and Russian life for our audience.

Recordings. We have produced 11 recordings which we distribute at our concerts and also through conventional music distribution channels.

Tours. The chorus has toured five times to Russia and Eastern Europe, each time performing to highly enthusiastic Russian and Easter European audiences. These tours generate major publicity in Russia - including such publicity as a major story in Pravda and a stint on Russia's equivalent of Good Morning America - reaching tens of millions of people all over Russia, more than a few of whom wrote to us saying how much it meant to them to see Americans singing the deep music of their country.

Special events. The Chorus has sponsored and executed a number of special choral events. These have included two international festivals of Russian choral music involving extensive collaboration with orchestras, eight different choral ensembles, and soloists from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Chorus also sponsored a musical tribute to the Alexandrov Ensemble, a well known Russian choir decimated by an airline crash in the Black Sea in 2016. Over 800 people attended this concert, and the video of this concert was widely circulated in Russia and deeply appreciated by viewers there.

Cross cultural events. The Chorus has for many years performed as a special and key guest at the Fort Ross Living History Day. Fort Ross, the site of a Russian colony in early 19th century California, is still preserved as a State Park, and every summer plays host to some 15,000 people who come to reenact life in that settlement some 200 years ago. The Chorus is also a yearly presence at San Francisco's Russian Festival, an annual celebration focused on preserving the best of Russian culture for the next generation.

Lectures, articles, etc. Various leaders of Slavyanka have given talks about Russian music and related themes to university groups, schools, all manner of civic groups and mass media. We are also regularly asked to write program notes for other choirs performing music from the Russian choral repertoire.

Sharing music with other choirs. We have helped other choirs prepare Russian choral repertoire for performance by coaching their singers and directors on language, performance practices, cultural background, and occasionally by sharing the podium.

We have a paid Artistic Director who trained as a choral conductor and singer in one of Russia's finest conservatories. We also have an assistant conductor who has been a music professional teacher, singer and conductor all her life, and who has special skills as voice teacher.

We have a volunteer Board of Directors who meet each month, working in partnership with the Artistic Director to oversee the affairs of the Chorus. The Board has committees to delegate significant portions of its work – ongoing Fundraising and Music Committees, and other committees from time to time as the need arises.

We have had 501c3 nonprofit status since 1984.

We have a large network of supporters and musical colleagues developed over the forty years of our choir who offer many forms of support to the organization.

We have a body of singers who continue to grow in vocal ability, correct pronunciation, and familiarity with Russian repertoire. It's a significant testament to their commitment that our tours abroad have been largely self-funded.

We have excellent relations and a stellar reputation with the very diverse Russian community in the Bay Area and in other parts of the country.

We have developed a very good relations with key leaders at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and with a number of other musical leaders in Russia. We regularly work with them in planning our concerts and repertoire.

We now have a large body of repertoire that represents the full range of this 1000 year old musical tradition.

As one of the very few American choirs devoted to this repertoire, we have developed an international reputation out of proportion to our size and our budget.

Musical Accomplishments
As noted above, musically we have given hundreds of concerts over our 42 year history, produced 11 CD's, and toured five times to Russia and Eastern Europe, singing in Russia's finest and most prestigious concert halls. One of our tours was actually the subject of a lengthy feature article in the bulletin of the International Federation of Choral Music, focusing on the power of music to bring peoples from different cultures together.

The Chorus has performed the American and West Coast premieres of a dozen or more Russian choral pieces. The Chorus has also twice been invited to perform at the highly competitive Western Regional Convention of the American Choral Directors Association, where it received a standing ovation from 500 choral directors.

In 2016, the Chorus had the great honor of being the only American choir invited to come to Russia and participate in the celebrations honoring the 150th anniversary of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Russia's premier and most highly regarded musical institution.

We have sold many of our recordings, further expanding our audience. One of these recordings alone, produced by Harmonia Mundi (one of the most highly regarded labels in the world, has been distributed world wide and has sold over 50,000 copies.

Cross Cultural Accomplishments
From its earliest days in the latter part of the Cold War, Slavyanka has been part of a larger movement for cross cultural understanding. At the San Francisco Mayor's request, Slavyanka participated in efforts to create a San Francisco Leningrad Sister City relationship and we performed for President Mikhail Gorbachev during his visit to San Francisco in 1990. Slavyanka helped to arrange the visit to San Francisco of the Pakrovsky Ensemble, one of Russia's most widely celebrated choral ensembles, and participated in joint performances with them. Slavyanka also sponsored and arranged the visit to San Francisco of the Vladimir Chamber Choir and has been host to other smaller Russian choirs and ensembles as well.

What’s Next
During the current COVID pandemic, we have continued to rehearse online and musically prepare the chorus for our next concert series – a concert which will introduce our American audience to the songs that were popular and beloved to the postwar generation in Russia. We are also beginning to plan for another concert series devoted to composers who in the twentieth century wrote music of great spiritual depth at a time when overtly religious composition was difficult if not impossible. On the cross-cultural side of our mission, we believe that even as our governments continue to be at odds, it’s all the more important to keep alive the kind of people to people connections that music can help sustain. San Francisco has in the past been an epicenter for that kind of cross cultural work in the past, and we intend to be part of continuing that tradition.