How surreal everything feels. How divisive and hostile parts of society have become to age, profession, race, lifestyle in just a matter of days, if not hou...

Music depends on routine. Applied to one of the highest creative activities of humankind that statement feels like sacrilege - or at least it feels like deb...

The image of the rose and nightingale is deeply intertwined with Russia’s cultural identity. Look only to Russian fine art in the nineteenth century, and the...

Turning off onto the embankment of the Fontanka the hubbub of Saint Petersburg’s Nevsky Prospekt almost immediately melts away. In that pocket of calm stands...

Mikhail Lermontov was perhaps the most esteemed Russian Romantic poet of the Golden Age after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Sometimes referred to as th...

An afternoon personal guided-excursion of the city to calm the nerves and help settle the mind from yesterday's day of masterclasses; a hearty Russian soup a...

No cultural exchange is complete without a good get-together for some direct and honest conversations. This is why when planning for this huge project as pa...

As the morning arrived on the opening day of the Saint Petersburg part of the project, Alexandria, Emelia, Ugne, Jonathan and Liam had absolutely no time to ...

Standing underneath the sign ‘International Arrivals’ at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport I found it hard to work out what I was feeling. Excitement? Nerve...

Have you ever thought you were being ‘helpful’ only to find that your meddling was… unhelpful? This blog post is a bit of a fly-on-the-wall moment looking at...

Words are pretty important. The English adage – ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ – sums up their power in much the same way as Soviet-Russian writers we...

Today marked my Moscow debut. A long time ago I made a promise to myself that I would treat every concert appearance with the same degree of preparation, rev...

In just a few days I'll be travelling to Russia to perform as a soloist, with some wonderful colleagues... and with reinforcements! Back in 2019 I had blissf...