Jazz and Classics
The RNO launched Jazz and Classics in 1993 to explore cultural links among nations, and links between classical and jazz musical genres.
Among the RNO's Jazz and Classics partners are music legends Dave Brubeck and Wynton Marsalis. The RNO/Brubeck collaboration has included:
- In Moscow in 1997, the European premiere of Brubeck's mass To Hope! A Celebration for orchestra, chorus, jazz quartet and vocal soloists.
- The release of a home video and DVD entitled Brubeck Returns to Moscow.
- Three concerts with the Dave Brubeck Quartet during the RNO's Summer 2002 Western U.S. concert series.
- And another first-the performance of a new Brubeck composition, Regret, inspired by what Dave Brubeck calls "the sumptuous sound" of the RNO strings.
 November 27, 1997: After a choir rehearsal, Russian soprano Maria Maskhulia practices her solo parts with Dave Brubeck. (Photo: Mark Dichter) |
 December 2, 1997: After the RNO/Dave Brubeck Quartet concert in front of a packed concert hall, the performers take in the applause. From left, Conductor Russell Gloyd, soloists Kevin Deas AND Mark Bleeke, Dave Brubeck and soloist Maria Maskhulia. (Photo: Mark Dichter) |
In 1999, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra joined Jazz and Classics in a performance together with the RNO on the enormous stage of the Kremlin Palace. The concert, a tribute to Duke Ellington during the centennial celebration of the composer's birth, was part of the White House Millennium Project.
The program featured two alternating versions-both jazz and classical-of Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite. Each movement was played first by the RNO in its original, classical form, then reinterpreted by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in Ellington's jazz arrangement. The concert also featured several Ellington compositions arranged by Marsalis for combined symphony and jazz orchestra performances. After the concert, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra musicians proclaimed the RNO "better than any other orchestra we've played with" (Moscow Times). This was a remarkable tribute to the RNO, considering the many orchestras around the world with which Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra have collaborated. Future initiatives between the two orchestras are in discussion.
 July 5, 1999: RNO lead trumpeter and Wynton Marsalis in discussion after the concert at Kremlin Hall. (Photo: Frank Stewart) |
 During a rehearsal break, Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and Dmitri Liss, Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra, review the score of Marsalis' arrangements of Duke Ellington's compositions played by the two orchestras in concert on July 5, 1999 in Moscow's Kremlin Hall. (Photo: Frank Stewart) |
Other recent Jazz and Classics programs include Summer 2002 U.S. performances of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue arranged for trumpet by Timofei Dokshitzer, and featuring RNO Principal Trumpet Vladislav Lavrik (read press acclaim here) and jazz-inspired performances by the RNO's chamber ensembles during annual visits to the U.S.
Jazz and Classics is a part of the RNO/Russian Arts Foundation Cultural Allies program. Major supporters include Metromedia International Telecommunications, Inc., The Trust for Mutual Understanding, The Starr Foundation, Philip Morris Companies, Grove Street Winery, the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, The White House Millennium Council and the U.S. Department of State.
For further information please contact or visit www.swashers.com.