YOUNG performers from Coventry will welcome musicians and dancers from Volgograd, Russia, at a free concert on Sunday (October 27), to celebrate 75 years of the twinned cities.
Coventry and the Russian city of Volgograd were twinned in 1944, as both cities rebuilt from the devastation of the second world war.
The friendship agreement marked the world’s first twinning of modern cities.
A concert at the Albany Theatre will celebrate the international friendship with an evening of dance and music.
The programme includes traditional Russian dances, parts of Tchaikovsky’s ‘the Nutcracker’ and ‘Swan Lake’, as well as musical recitals of Rachmaninov works.
Joining Coventry schoolchildren will be the young visitors from Volgograd, with dancers, singers and a pianist.
Visiting from Russia, the Volzhanochka Children’s Dance Group will perform traditional dances from the Volga region.
The young dancers will show off their distinctive cossack dancing, as well as with a performance of the ‘Russian Dance’ from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Dragonfly’, to music by Kreisler.
A soprano from the Moscow Conservatoire, Yana Besyadynskaya, will perform her lyric works. Besyadynskaya has performed globally at the Lincoln Centre, Carnegie Hall, Verbier Festival, Frankfurt Opera, Tokyo Opera City Hall, and she has won ten international competitions.
Performing on the piano, Yuri Ilynov from the Volgograd Institute of Arts and Culture has also won many competitions.
Ilynov has also been a conductor at the Tsarytsin Opera House, conductor at Ruse State Opera, in Bulgaria. He is currently conductor at the Sofia National Opera House.
The first violinist and concertmaster of the Volgograd Academic Symphony Orchestra also join the programme – Albert Zhmaev has achieved the role of Laureate of the First Degree of International competitions (Volgograd 2009, St. Petersburg 2009, Volgograd 2013, Volgograd 2017).
Joining the Russian musicians from Coventry will be composer Derek Nisbet, whose ‘Twin Song’, was written especially for the 70th Anniversary, it will be performed at the show with primary school children from Coventry.
Ballet students from Maria Dunham’s school will perform with the Russian children for the first time at the start of a new friendship between young people from both cities.
Amy Kakoura, a singer and composer from Coventry, works with Theatre Absolute and Talking Birds theatre companies. She co-produced the musical ‘Songs from a Ledge’ in 2014.
The free show is hosted the the Russian Embassy in the UK, a spokesperson said: “We are looking forward to an amazing UK – Russia project on the 27th October in Coventry, as young musical talents from Coventry and Volgograd celebrating 75 years of friendship.”
The free tickets for the evening should be booked via the Albany Theatre.
