Japanese Choir "Sirakaba" will perform in Vladivostok

In the Sunday, Sept. 15 at Vladivostok only concert choir will perform honored Japanese "Sirakaba" (translated into Russian language - "Birch").

This choir, which includes up to sixty performers, unique in that it performs the Soviet and Russian folk songs both in Russian and in Japanese. His repertoire - Russian folk song "Peddlers", "tramp", "Kalinka", the classic - "Amur waves", "The Long Road", the Soviet - "Willow," "Oh, the roads," modern - "Million of red roses" and others, as well as Japanese traditional songs and dances. The fulfillment of the Japanese chorus is so necessary for the soul of the audience that they tend to start to sing along to all the audience.

Japanese concert "Birches" will be held Sept. 15 at the Cultural Center of Trade Unions (former Palace of Culture named after Lenin) at st. Svetlanskaya 147. Beginning at 15 hours. The concert will also feature famous Vladivostok folk ensemble "turtledove".

Reference: Choir "Sirakaba" was created in Japan in July 1950 in a difficult situation the country's reconstruction after the Second World War. Its founder and first conductor was a professional singer Kitagawa Guo, who during the war was in a POW camp in Primorsky Krai . There he heard admire its beauty and its melodic songs of the locals. Later Kitagawa Guo as a singer was invited to the musical group "Seaside Orchestra", which with a repertoire of Russian folk songs performed in Vladivostok and the suburbs.

Kitagawa was released from the camp and returned to Japan in October 1949. Leading the choir "Sirakaba," he began in his country an active promoter and distributor of Russian and Soviet pesen.na Japanese.

In 1981 the choir "Sirakaba" held 10 concerts in four cities of the Soviet Union - in Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk and Moscow. Choir made a big impression on the audience, which was filled to overflowing concert halls. In 2002 and 2008 "Sirakaba" has successfully performed a concert in St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Moscow jointly with the State Academic Russian Orchestra named Andreev. And in 2006 the choir "Sirakaba" was the initiator and organizer of the first in Japan Festival of Russian folk songs.

In 2000 held in Tokyo Big concert dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the chorus of "Sirakaba", was the world-famous opera singer - bass Bolshoi Theatre Arthur Eisen. And ten years for a concert in honor of the 60th anniversary of the "Sirakaby" in the great hall, "the Tokyo Palace of Culture" gathered about 2500 appreciative listeners. In this concert was specially arrived from Moscow State Academic Choir Russian Private Sveshnikov.

During the existence of the choir singers' Sirakaby "independently translated into Japanese more than 500 songs written in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and execute them. The choir has also published numerous collections of music of these songs and released several CD.

Currently the choir "Sirakaba" Keizo Fujimoto head conductor and pianist Masumi Ishikawa.