Cultural Allies

Cultural Allies is an ongoing program of arts exchange involving musicians, performing arts organizations and arts professionals. Initiated by the Russian Arts Foundation in partnership with the Russian National Orchestra, it is a powerful expression of the RAF's mission to promote international understanding through the arts.

Cultural Allies encompasses residencies and exchanges, workshops and master classes, commissioning projects and performances. Participants include conductors, pianists, classical and jazz musicians, opera singers and composers. Some of these artists are at the beginning of promising careers and others have achieved international acclaim. They come from different ethnic traditions and mirror the cultural diversity of each of their countries.

Cultural Allies has made possible:

• A multi-year project with Dave Brubeck and the Brubeck Institute to explore the arts alliances of America and Russia, and of jazz and classical music.
• The collaboration of Wynton Marsalis, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the RNO on the highly successful Ellington Centennial in 1999. Future projects in Russia and the US are in development.
• The Russian debuts of conductors Kent Nagano, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Judd, Carlo Ponti, Jr. and Charles Ketcham, and of soprano Jessye Norman. Leonard Slatkin will make his Russian debut in October 2003, with the RNO at the Moscow Conservatory.
• Residencies and exchanges that brought conductor/pianist Mikhail Pletnev to the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. and flutist Maxim Rubtsov to the San Francisco Symphony in 2002.
• The participation of Janice Chandler (soprano), Kenneth Cox (bass) and Robert Lee (tenor) in a performance of Mozart's Requiem in Kiev in September 2002. Held on the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the concert was a deeply moving experience for the RNO, the international cast and an audience that included dignitaries from Ukraine, other former Soviet republics and the US.

Cultural Allies receives funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, The Starr Foundation and other generous supporters. For further information please contact: