Deane Merrill has provided us with information on The Slavyanka Men's Slavic Chorus which regularly presents a cappella concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area. The repertoire is liturgical and folk music, mostly Russian.

The following are some selections from Slavyanka's CD Russia Old and New:

• In the Dark Forest (Traditional 17th Century) 2:03 (0.9M)
• The Birch Tree (Traditional) 3:27 (1.7M)
• Shall I Go? (Traditional) 1:43 (0.8M)
• Borodino (text: M. Lemontov (1814-1841) 2:10 (1.0M)

Old friends of "Friends and Partners", Those Darn Accordians now have their own WWW server. You can sample their work here - recorded from their cassette "Those Darn Accordians! (Vongole Fisarmonica!)" performed at the 4th International Accordion Festival in Lithuania in 1993. The name of this lighthearted song is "Lithuania" -- just click here to listen.

You can also listen to "Autumn in Vilnius" a beautiful song recorded in Vilnius last year and made available on CD, "Squeeze This!"

Please contact Monica Brady for more information about Those Darn Accordians.

Simon Hawkin has a collection of several Russian "bards" available in three formats (transliterated Russian, KOI8 and postscript) which are available from our Music page.

The Russian Folk Orchestra is the United States's premier Russian folk instruments ensemble. Founded in 1974 by Professor John Garvey, the Orchestra has delighted audiences throughout the Midwest in more than 160 concerts featuring its unique instruments and enthralling music. Listen to some sound samples of their music.

Yuri Naumov started his career as a blues artist in Siberia while attending medical school in the 1980s. When he was forced to leave school, he spent several years of performing "underground" in Russia before deciding to move to the United States - the birthplace of the blues - to rebuild his career. Read about his interesting career, what the critics say, the lyrics to his songs find out where he will be performing.

SovInformBuro of the RUSSIAN CLUB at MIT has put together an archive of lyrics to Russian songs (hopefully, most complete with guitar chords), accessible through the WWW. The archive is very small at this point, but we hope that it will grow dramatically in a short time thanks to contributions of lyrics to email address: SovInformBuro@MIT.EDU.

Note: You must have KOI-8 installed to be able to read it.

Any Elvis Presley fan should check out Andrea Berman's excellent WWW server above!

Information about The Big Elvis from Jeff Pike's "The Death of Rock and Roll".

Elena Romanova, of the Moscow Magazine, has written a very interesting article about the FIAN Chamber Music Club. FIAN (the Russian acronym of the Moscow Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences) is where Andrei Sakharov worked for so much of his life. The club was founded 20 years ago, at time when secret research centers sponsored public associations and clubs to organize poetry readings, art exhibitions and concerts, not always in strict accordance with the norms of official Soviet culture in the Brezhnev era. This club has hosted many famous performers and Elena's article makes for interesting reading.

David Walker of the University of California, Irvine has put together a really nice collection of traditional music from Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and the US which is performed by himself on the penny whistle and ocarina. David has also offered to assist on developing a good American music page.