St. Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory
IX International Conservatory Week Festival
October 23 – 30, 2009

The International Conservatory Week Festival is one of the St. Petersburg key music events. During the past nine years the Festival has become familiar to audiences speaking 38 different languages and gained popularity in various countries. It was twice awarded the title of the Year’s Best International Project and named ‘Pride of the Russian Culture’ by the media as a unique project.

The idea to have this festival originated in the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 2001 when a revolutionary concept of integrating Russia’s oldest school of music into the global music scene was created. Festival prospects are to create and develop a global network of the world’s and Russia’s best schools of music, young and talented performers and well-known professors.

The main objective of the International Conservatory Week is to improve the status of a professional musician, making performer’s career more prestigious and respected, and make academic music attract new audience focusing on young listeners. At the same time the Festival is open to all styles and genres: from early music to jazz and ethnic rhythms.

The Festival is open to any format making it possible to provide professional musicians with various opportunities to communicate and share their experiences in the framework of numerous concerts, competitions, master-classes, workshops, research and art exhibitions, seminars, open lectures, public talks, interviews and presentations. The events are also open to the wider audience of music-lovers. International Conservatory Week brightens up St. Petersburg autumn season with lively student festival of color and sound.

The 2009 Festival Main Event will be unveiling and presentation of the new organ built for the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. The Festival opens with a gala ceremony celebrating the first modern ‘king of instruments’ installed in St. Petersburg in the last fifty years. The organ made by the German EULE Company and already dubbed as “Organ of the 21st Century” has already been installed in the country’s oldest school of music that is widely regarded as the home of organ playing and teaching in Russia.

The Music Forum keeps attracting participants from more and more countries and in 2009 will present gifted musicians from higher music schools of Russia, the USA, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Luxemburg, Poland, Hungary, Israel, Japan, China and Armenia. Alongside with traditional Orchestra and Choral Academies, Piano and Chamber Series, as well as the All Flags to Be Our Guest, Musical Travels and Jazz in the Teatralnaya Square concerts 2009 Festival program features new concert genres, premiers of works written by young and renowned composers.

The Research to Practice program of the 2009 Festival offers a conference on organ playing and workshops by famous professors, an exhibition of documents and materials referring to the history of organs in the Russia’s oldest school of music and an exhibition of young and well-known St. Petersburg artists.

2009 International Conservatory Week is supported by St. Petersburg Committees on Culture and Mass Media and a Board of Trustees that consists of representatives of diplomatic missions stationed in St. Petersburg.

The Festival events are widely covered by national and local St. Petersburg media – TV channels, radio stations, newspapers, magazines and Internet media.