Creating collaborative programs is especially challenging and rewarding. In 2003, musicians from the Moscow Conservatory invited Boston University graduate students to compose short pieces and send them to Moscow, where the compositions would be rehearsed and practiced for a future performance during the Days of Russian Culture in America.

When the Russians arrived in the United States a month later, each of the chosen young composers from Boston University had an opportunity to rehearse his/her composition with the Russian ensemble and provide them with last-minute directions before performing it to the public. I remember sitting at the rehearsals and thinking to myself, "Music certainly is a universal language."