Anniversary Concerts
70th Anniversary Concert
Saturday, September 9th, 2023, 8:00 p.m.
Woolsey Hall ~ Yale University
Alumni from across the world will join the on-campus chorus at Yale for an evening of sacred and folk music of the Slavic world. The concert is open to the public and followed by a reception for audience members and singers interested in auditioning for the 2023-2024 season.
69th Anniversary Concert
Sunday evening, September 11, 2022
Battell Chapel ~ Yale University
This was our first reunion concert since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and alumni and current students were thrilled to be reunited on stage. The concert and concert video were partly sponsored by a grant from the Cultural Vistas’ Rebuilding a Russian-American Conversation program.
Professional recording of the concert was used in the Yale Dramat’s Fall Ex, Gogol’s “The Government Inspector” in October.
60th Anniversary Concert
Sunday, November 10, 2013, 2:30 p.m.
Woolsey Hall ~ Yale University with our Founding Conductor, Denis Mickiewicz, and others
Over 140 singers came from around the world to perform sacred and secular songs under the direction of Founding Conductor Denis Mickiewicz and conductors Dan Gsovski, John Stewart, Bruce Lieberman, Dan Godfrey and Brock Holmes in a program marking 60 years of the Yale Russian Chorus as musical ambassadors. We started rehearsals on Friday morning in the basement of St. Mary's Church on Hillhouse Ave. Fine banquet on Saturday evening at the Graduate Club with toast and songs until just before midnight. Mary Newman presented Denis with a ink drawing of the YRC rehearsing in the '60s. The Yale Slavic Chorus, a women's singing group founded in 1969 with Yale Russian Chorus help, put in a guest appearance, singing Balkan, Russian and Georgian songs. Both a DVD video and a CD were made of the concert. For information, including ordering, send an e-mail to info@yrcalums.org.
50th Anniversary Concert
Saturday evening, October 25, 2003
Woolsey Hall ~ Yale University
Our Alumni 50th Anniversary concert was presented in conjunction with Yale’s celebration of the 300th Anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg. We were the closing event of the weekend conference on St. Petersburg organized by the Beinecke Rare Book Library and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and others. How very prescient of Peter the Great to found his new capital 250 years before Denis and George started the YRC!
There were about 175 singers on stage (it took forever to get on and off stage). The audience was huge (at least 1500 people) and very warm. Denis got an award from the Yale Music School.
The Slavic Reading Room organized an exhibit for the Petersburg conference in the main lobby of the Library, presenting pieces from their collection, and they gave the YRC 2 display cases for an exhibit of our memorabilia. It can be viewed here.
The Wall Street Journal published a very enthusiastic full-page article about the YRC and the anniversary, which came out on the Thursday we arrived in New Haven to start rehearsing. Very exciting beginning!
