Vesna Children’s Choir

The Russian Choir Vesna was founded in 1965 by its current director. It has grown into a children’s choir school where at present 300 children study singing, piano, music theory and music literature. Classes take place in the afternoons after the students have attended their secondary schools. Eighty children make up the concert choir which often perform with well-known orchestras and conductors, aappears frequently in Moscow, goes on tours around the country and abroad and appears on TV and radio. They have won a number of first prizes in various competitions in Hungary, Italy, France, Spain, France, Bulgaria and the European Choral Award - Grand Prize Europe 2000. The choir has a large repertoire of classical music of different eras, countries, styles and genres. Many contemporary pieces have been written especially for the Vesna Choir.

Alexandre Ponomarev

Alexandre Ponomarev taught himself to play the accordion when he was 10. At 19 he entered the army where he played different instruments in an orchestra and directed a choir. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory and graduated from the Kharkov Institute of Arts in choral conducting. The air of the Vesna Children’s Choral School is for the students to develop both musically and aesthetically. To achieve this objective Mr. Ponomarev and his colleagues developed an original system of pedagogical methods which have given hundreds of children access to the world of music.