The Children’s Chorus of Russia has presented its first release – the song Music of the Sun

The Children’s Chorus of Russia, featuring a thousand children from all of the country’s regions, and the Mariinsky Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev have released their first recording – the song Music of the Sun. The soloist is Timur Slanov and the recording was produced in January 2014 in the acoustically perfect surroundings of the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre.

As Valery Gergiev has previously stated, the Children’s Chorus of Russia is not a “one-off” project assembled for the Olympic Games. The Olympics are just one of the events, albeit a very significant one, in the thousand-member chorus’ artistic life. The initial aim of the establishment of this huge ensemble was to promote choruses – first and foremost among children and young people. The children recorded the song, which is already available on iTunes and may be downloaded from anywhere in the world just like any track produced by pop singers. The management of iTunes was profoundly interested in the project and uploaded the song to its site incredibly quickly.

Music of the Sun is an original song written on the initiative and with the support of the Valery Gergiev Charitable Foundation specially for the Children’s Chorus of Russia. The lyrics and the music were composed by Sergei Zhukov, Dmitry Velichko, Anna Matison and Timur Ezugbaia. The arrangement was undertaken by Alexei Krasheninnikov. It is worth noting that the composition of new music for choral ensembles is a very rare phenomenon today.

In addition to releasing the song itself, a video clip of Music of the Sun is also available. The format of the video clip is also very unusual for choral music, though the decision was taken to produce a music video specifically to make contact with children and young people.
The Children’s Chorus of Russia will soon be releasing an album.

The idea to form such a chorus was first voiced one year ago. In January 2014 the participants of this immense ensemble – from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok – met on the new stage of the Mariinsky Theatre. In just three months of hard work, the foundations were thus laid to revive the traditions of choral song in Russia on a new and contemporary basis.

The video clip of Music of the Sun may be found on the following websites: www.youtube.com and www.vimeo.com