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The Educational Bridge Project (EBP) was launched under the auspices of Boston University in 1997, and the first festival, "Days of St. Petersburg Conservatory at Boston University," featured two distinguished Russian composers, Boris Tishchenko and Alexander Mnatsakanyan. From 1997 until 2005 the EBP organized twelve more festivals, five "Days of Russian Culture in America" and seven "Days of American Culture in Russia ."
In 2006 the EBP became an independent organization and in 2007 obtained the 501 (c) (3) status from IRS. During this time program development; i.e., production of the festivals, was suspended in order to focus on building the organization.
In November 2008 we organized our 14th festival - the first as an independent not for profit entity. We were thrilled to host wonderful musicians from the Mariinsky Theater and a delegate art historian from the Hermitage Museum.
In 2009 we were able to resume our schedule of two festivals per year and therefore host an even larger number of prestigious guests from Russian and American cultural institutions.
Spring 1999
St. Petersburg chamber ensemble performs music of Boston University composers at the St. Petersburg Composers' Association during the 35th International Festival, Musical Spring in St. Petersburg.
1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011
Fall 1997 |
Spring 1998 Marjorie Merryman (Chairman of the Department of Composition and Theory at Boston University) and Edward Cohen (Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) went to St. Petersburg for a series of lectures on comtemporary American music and attended a concert of their music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory organized by EBP and performed by the St. Petersburg Conservatory faculty and students and gave lectures on contemporary American music.
Fall 1998 Vladislav Uspensky (Professor of Composition) and Irina Taimanova (Professor of Opera Directing) at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, came to Boston to give concerts, lectures, and master-classes at Boston University, the Longy School of Music, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dartmouth College Dmitri Tchassovitin (Vice-Rector in Studies of the St. Petersburg Conservatory) visited Boston University and the Longy School of Music for lectures on the topic Performance Phrasing in the Beethoven Sonatas and for meetings with administrators of the two institutions |
Spring 1999 Richard Cornell (Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Boston University) served as Chairman of the Jury of the Young Composers' Competition at the International Children's Music Festival in St. Petersburg and presented a paper on Composing in the Electronic Music Studio at the Composers' Union. Music of Bruce MacCombie (Dean of the School for the Arts at Boston University) and Julian Wachner (Boston University Organist and Choirmaster) was performed in St. Petersburg on two occasions: on May 16, 1999 at the Glazunov Concert Hall of the Conservatory as part of the Festival The Days of American Music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and May 18, 1999 at the Composers House as part of the XXXV International Festival Musical Spring in St. Petersburg. Program of the May 16th concert at the Small Hall of the St. Petersburg Conservatory included: Leaden Echo, Golden Echo for Soprano and orchestra, text by Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1989; Elegy (To the Memory of Stephen Albert) for Clarinet, Violin,. Cello, Piano, 1993; Greeting (Sixty Bars for Krzysztof) for Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Violin, Cello, 1993; Reflections for String Orchestra - by Bruce MacCombie and Cycles,for Clarinet and Piano in three movements, 1997 by Julian Wachner; Program of the Chamber music concert on Tuesday, May 18 at the Composers’ House included: Greeting by Bruce MacCombie and String Quartet by Julian Wachner. Dr. Leibman traveled to St. Petersburg to coordinate the visit and promote future exchanges between the faculties of Boston University and the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Many leading figures of the St. Petersburg music community have expressed keen interest in participating in future exchanges. They include: Lydia L. Voltchek (Director of the Glazunov Concert Hall), Sergei Yevtushenko (Deputy Director of the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonic), Dr. Michael Byalik (Professor of Musicology at the St. Petersburg Conservatory), Alexander Mnatsakanyan (Chairman of the Composition Department at the St. Petersburg Conservatory), and Dr. Tatyana S. Bershadskaya (Professor of Music Theory at the St. Petersburg Conservatory). Leibman met with Janet C. Demiray (Consul for Press and Culture at the American Consulate in St. Petersburg) who has supported the past exchanges and expressed interest in lending support to future exchanges the and Tatyana Kosmynina (Cultural Affairs Assistant) for the discussions about “The Educational Bridge Project”.
Fall 1999 Dmitri Tchassovitin (Vice-Rector of the St. Petersburg Conservatory) and Lydia L. Voltchek (Director of the Glazunov Concert Hall and Assistant to the rector at the St. Petersburg Conservatory) met with Dr. Leibman to discuss the perspectives for the future exchanges. They also gave lectures at the New England Symposium on Research in Music Education at Regis College on October 23, 1999, respectively on Music Education in Russia Under the Pressure of the Financial Crisis and Musical Education of the Young in Russia; Vladislav Uspensky (Professor of Composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory) visited Boston University for the premieres of The Prayer, a choral composition commissioned by Marsh Chapel of Boston University and the Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello commissioned by Dr. Terry King of the Longy School of Music. He also gave a lecture at the Boston University’s Composers’ Forum on November 2, 1999. Irina Taimanova (Professor of Opera Directing at the St. Petersburg Conservatory) gave a coaching session at the Longy School of Music. In St. Petersburg: The Contemporary Music Ensemble, ALEA III, (Boston University), traveled to St. Petersburg to take part in the XI International Music Festival Sound Ways. Theodore Antoniou (Professor of Composition and Conducting at Boston University and Music Director of the ALEA III) gave two lectures during the Festival. Dean MacCombie and Dr. Leibman, who came for the part of the Festival, met on November 20 with the administrators of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Vladislav Chernushenko (Rector), Dmitri Tchassovitin (Vice-Rector), Alexander Pataman (Dean of International Affairs) for the discussion on the development of the artistic and educational exchanges. They also had a meeting with Paul R. Smith (Consul General of the United States of America) during which the Consul General expressed his interest in the cultural and educational exchanges between the two cities and the possibilities of working together on the project St. Petersburg 2003 which celebrates the 300th anniversary of the City of St. Petersburg. |
Spring 2000
Fall 2000 The group of St. Petersburg musicians who came to Boston in October 2000 for the festival, Days of Russian Culture in Boston, included four St. Petersburg Conservatory Professors: Vladimir Ovcharek, Chairman of the String Department, Larissa Dan'ko, Chair of the Music History Department, Lydia Volchek, Assistant to the Rector and Director of the Concert Hall, Dmitry Tchassovitin, Vice-Rector in Studies; and Gregory Korchmar, Vice-president of the St. Petersburg Composers Association. The schedule included the following events: Master-classes
Concerts
Lectures
Composers' Forum at Boston University, Brandeis University and the Longy School of Music: Composer Gregory Korchmar’s talk on his own music with live and recorded illustrations Social events: meetings, lunches, tours, observing the Music division classes |
2001 |
Visit of seven Boston musicians to St. Petersburg and Moscow to participate in two Festivals, give master-classes and lectures in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and conduct series of auditions for BUTI 2002 season. The chamber concert, Boston - St. Petersburg, Musical Bridge, on May 20 at the Small Philharmonic Hall as part of the 37th International Festival Musical Spring in St. Petersburg and the Symphonic concert on May 25, at the Glazunov Hall of the St. Petersburg Conservatory as part of the Festival, International Week of the Conservatories. The participants include Roman Totenberg, Bruce MacCombie, Jeremy Yudkin, Ludmilla Leibman, Horia Mihail, Bernard Rands (Harvard University), and Yehudi Wyner (Brandeis University.)
Summer 2001 Two students from St. Petersburg Special School for Gifted Children, Svetlana Kosakovskaya and Nikita Poletaev, came to study at BUTI (part of the grant received from the Trust For Mutual Understanding assigned in the proposal for two full BUTI scholarships.)
Fall 2001 Visit of fourteen representatives of the cultural institutions of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia. The group included five student composers from St. Petersburg Conservatory (Katherina Blinova, Svetlana Nesterova, Maria Petrenko, Anton Tanonov, and Nikolay Mazhara); Trio “Sound Ways” (composer Alexander Radvilovich, violinist Alexandra Savina, and clarinetist Arthur Lukomiansky); Piano Duo “Philharmonica” (Natalia Katonova and Dmitry Bystrov); musicologists Mikhail Bialik (St. Petersburg conservatory) and Svetlana Sigida (Moscow conservatory); a State Hermitage Museum curator Anna Konivets, and a theater art historian Marina Kornakova. “The Boston University Days in Russia” included series of concerts, lectures, and discussions. |
Spring 2002 Exchange visit to St. Petersburg and Moscow of the group of Boston University School of Music, School of Visual Arts, and the University Professors Program faculty and students for the Fifth Annual Festival, “Days of Boston University in Russia”. The Festival’s events included collaborative concerts (students), lectures (Leibman, Yudkin), master-classes (Totenberg), art exhibit (D. Cornell), community meetings (Roman Totenberg), International Festival “Musical Spring in St. Petersburg” (Fussell and Schmidt.) The participants included art professor Deborah Cornell, composer Charles Fussell, violin professor emeritus Roman Totenberg, musicologist Jeremy Yudkin, music theorist Ludmilla Leibman and assistant to the VP Kevin Carleton; the students group consisted of three singers from the BU Opera Institute – David Crawford, Georgia Pickett, and Elizabeth Pizzi; string quartet Daniel Han, Zhongling Li, Mark Holloway, and Patric Owen; an art student Michelle Murillo.
Fall 2002 Visit of thirty musicians, music educators, and art administrators from Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia for the Fifth Annual Festival, “Days of Boston University in Russia”. The group included composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky and his 13-member contemporary music ensemble of Moscow Conservatory, “Studio New Music” (10/21 Harvard Music Department colloquium, 10/21 Tufts University music department presentation, 10/22 BU Composers’ Forum and 10/23 CFA concert Hall concert); four soloists from the St. Petersburg Young Singers Academy of the Mariinsky Theater (10/22 BU Castle concert, 10/24 Harvard Musical Association concert, and 10/25 BU Theater Studio 210 concert); the four-member Nevsky String Quartet from St. Petersburg (10/26 CFA Concert and 10/29 Composers’ Forum); St. Petersburg composer Andrei Petrov (10/18 Freshmen Concert Music class, 10/26 BU Art Gallery concert); the St. Petersburg State Hermitage Museum curator Anna Konivets (10/28 presentation for the non-music majors MU 111and 10/29 presentation for the visual arts’ students and faculty); musicologist Boris Berezovsky (10/23 lecture on 200 anniversary of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society); Larissa Gergieva, Director St. Petersburg Young Singers Academy of the Mariinsky Theater (10/24 and 10/25 master-class at the CFA voice department and Opera Institute); Manana Gogitidze, St. Petersburg Theater Art Academy student and her mother Olga Petrova, a composer (10/25 presentation for the Theater Arts’ students and faculty, 10/28 presentation for the MU 101 students); Natalia Katonova, a piano faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory (lecture, “St. Petersburg Piano tradition” and a master-class)
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Spring 2003 Exchange visit to St. Petersburg and Moscow of the group of fourteen graduate students of the Boston University School of Music for the Sixth Annual Festival Days of Boston University in Russia. Participants included: two singers from the Opera Institute, six instrumentalists, and six composers (students of Professors Lukas Foss and Theodore Antoniou.) The events included: a) four concerts in St. Petersburg during the week of the city’s tercentennial celebration (May 27 at the Theater Museum named after Samoilovs, 28th at the Sheremetev Palace , 29th at the Russian Museum of Ethnography, and a collaborative concert with the singers of the Mariinsky Theater Academy of Young Singers on May 30th at the Kshesinsky Palace); b) two concerts in Moscow (June 4th at the Russian Cultural Foundation and the collaborative concert with the Moscow Conservatory “Studio New Music” ensemble, “The Music of the Concentration Camps”, on June 7th at the Moscow Conservatory Rachmaninov Hall); three composers forums (June 2nd at the Moscow Composers’ Union, June 5th at the Moscow Conservatory, and June 8th at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.)
Fall 2003 Visit of forty musicians from Moscow and St. Petersburg for the Sixth Annual Festival, “Days of Russian Culture at Boston University”. The schedule included a wide range of concerts, workshops, lectures, master-classes, and a conference: Concerts Conference Master Classes Lectures The Educational Bridge Project collaborated in the Fall with a new counterpart, the Museum Program at the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). The State Hermitage Museum art historian Anna Konivets, who is also a Director of the Hermitage-Guggenheim Project, as well as the Educational Bridge Project’s coordinator in St. Petersburg, gave a lecture, The Russian Emperor as an Art Collector: the Masterpieces of the Peter the Great in the Hermitage Collection, on November 20th (CAS Museum Studies, organized by professor Melanie Hall.) For this event, the Educational Bridge Project received additional funding from the Humanities Foundation at Boston University. Workshop
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Spring 2004 The participants of the festival, Days of American Culture in Russia, included Boston University Hillel Rabbi Joseph Polak, assistant to Vice President in Public Relations and the EBP Advisor Kevin Carleton, Professor of Musicology Jeremy Yudkin, and the EBP Director, Dr. Ludmilla Leibman. The schedule of the trip included:
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Spring 2005 A two-week Festival held in St. Petersburg, “Days of Boston University in Russia,” was dedicated to Boston University Professor and founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet Raphael Hillyer’s 90th birthday. The Festival included:
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2006-2007 |
The Educational Bridge Project becomes an independent, not for profit organization, and initiates a fund-raising campaign while continuing building its capacity for future endeavors. |
2008 |
Spring 2008 In light of continuing collaboration with the Educational Bridge Project, Dr. Ilya Altman, co-director of The Moscow Holocaust and Education Research Center, visited Boston to discuss future collaborative programs, as well as to give a series of lectures at Boston University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, Facing History and Ourselves, and the Russian WWII Veterans’ organization. Fall 2008 The Educational Bridge Project’s fourteenth annual Russian-American festival took place November 4-14, 2008. The festival featured representatives of the two greatest cultural and artistic institutions of Russia, the State Hermitage Museum and the Mariinsky Theater, both from the imperial city of St. Petersburg. Festival highlights included:
Hermitage Today: A Legacy of Tsar Peter's Reforms, for the students of the Boston University College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) Writing Program
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Fall 2009 16th Festival took place in Boston from October 27th through November 15th. The festival featured representatives of prestigious artistic and educational institutions of St. Petersburg, the cultural capital of Russia: St. Petersburg Radio, St. Petersburg University, St. Petersburg Conservatory, as well as four librarians from the Children's Libraries of the Frunzensky District in St. Petersburg. Additionally, three young Russian musicians participated in this festival−Alexey Stadler, a cellist from St. Petersburg, Peter Lundstrem, a violinist from Moscow, and Aiman Baymuldina, a pianist from Moscow. Festival highlights include concerts of classical music performed by acclaimed St. Petersburg pianist Igor Uriash and by the three young musicians, multi-media presentations by librarians Olga Buslaeva, Yulia Kushchenko, Olga Sidorova, and Tatiana Glavatskaya, lectures by Elena Kiyko, Chief Editor of Cultural Programs at the St. Petersburg Radio, as well as a musical evening at the private residence of Dr. John Silber, President Emeritus of Boston University. The educational institutions that hosted the festivals events and participants ranged from Brookline public schools to universities such as Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Brandeis, NEC and Boston University. All programs of the Festival were free and open to the public. |
2009 |
Spring 2009
15th Festival took place in St. Petersburg and Moscow in four parts: Young Composers Workshop, Concerts with Historic Commentary, Young Writers Workshops, and Young Actors Workshops. More than two hundred people participated in the Festival, and more than twenty events took place over the period of sixteen days, from May 12 to 28, 2009. We were welcomed by three new organizations: on May 15th the US Consulate General hosted a reception in honor of our young composers, on May 21st the Israeli Embassy in Russia sponsored an evening dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and on May 23rd the Moscow State Conservatory provided a venue for our premiere of Boston composer, Ruth Lomon’s Oratory “Testimony of Witnesses.” In addition to our long-standing relationship with the St. Petersburg Conservatory, we established exciting new collaborations with the Moscow Pedagogical State University Choir under the direction of Maestro Alexander Soloviev, the Moscow Children’s Chorus Studio, “Joy,” under the direction of Tatyana Zhdanova, the Children’s Studio of the St. Petersburg Musical Theater “Zazerkalie” under the direction of Alexander Petrov, the St. Petersburg Theater Academy under Svetlana Ivanovna Melnikova, and the St. Petersburg “Theater of Generations” under Danila Korogodskiy. The Festival’s highlights included the following events:
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