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Fall
1955: Photo - Serge Jaroff
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Early musical models for the Yale
Russian Chorus included especially the Don Cossacks under Serge
Jaroff. The YRC tried to attend every concert of the group
in the New York/Boston area. Here the YRC spends an evening
with Mr. Jaroff at the Balalaika restaurant in New York City
after a Don Cossack concert at Carnegie Hall in the fall of
1955. |
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October
1955: Poster - Coffin lecture on Raskolnikov
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The
Yale Russian Chorus began in 1953 as a musical offshoot of
the Yale Russian Club. Membership in the two organizations
overlapped considerably until 1958 or so. An early activity
was organizing lectures on Russian and Soviet topics for
the Yale community. In 1955, when he gave this lecture, William
Sloan Coffin Jr. was studying for a Bachelor of Divinity
at the Yale Divinity School. |
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April
1958: Poster - A Life for the Czar
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In
April 1958 the YRC presented a concert version of the first
act of Mikhail Glinka's opera, A Life for the Czar (known
in the USSR as Ivan Susanin), in collaboration with the New
Haven Symphony Orchestra. This was the first US performance
of the original Glinka version. |
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| August
1958: Photo, 5x7 - Red Square |
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After
the signing of the Lacy Zarubin Agreement on cultural exchange
between the USA and the USSR, the Chorus raised money to
travel with 18 singers to the USSR in August 1958. They gave
informal concerts (i.e. not prearranged, not in concert halls)
in parks and squares, typically opening with a few spirituals
from the Yale Songbook and then launching into songs in Russian. |
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| August
1958: Photo, 8x10 - Red Square (John Francis) |
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After
the YRC sang for a half hour to an hour in a park or square,
Russians would gather around each singer to ask questions
and discuss whatever was on their mind. The singing and discussions
with Soviet citizens were the core of the YRC's efforts to
promote real cultural exchange between the USA and the USSR.
The other side of those activities was bringing Russian choral
music - at that time largely unknown in the USA - to American
audiences and discussing with them the YRC's experiences
in cultural exchange. |
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| May
1959: Article - Readers Digest |
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After
the 1958 YRC trip Charles Neff wrote an account of the experience
in the Lion Magazine, which was then picked up by the Readers
Digest in May 1959. That article gave the YRC nation-wide
name recognition and helped immensely in fund-raising for
future trips and in getting concerts at US universities.
It also introduced the American public to a working model
for cultural exchange with the USSR. |
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