Part one of Passport's guide to Moscow's favorite - Passport magazine

Out&About
British Business Club
On the River
It was “jolly boating weather” when the
British Business Club sailed “doon the watter”
for its May evening this year. To the
accompaniment of a band which played
appropriately out-of-date music very
well, and a wonderful assortment of food,
both Indian and British, a large crowd
admired the sights of the river between
Krasnopresnaya and Vorobyovy Gory. To
starboard we had the Moscow power station,
and to port the Rossiya building site.
Then, as the drink flowed, the scenery
RBCC go Norwegian
The Russo-British Chamber of Commerce
hosted a networking evening in
early June jointly with the Norwegian-
Russian Chamber of Commerce at the
Katerina-City Hotel, near Paveletskaya
Station. The highlight of the evening
was a talk by Vladimir Bagreev, the
head of the Norwegian-Russian cham-
Moscow Mellow Divas
Summer Concert
On June 5 at St. Andrews Church,
Moscow, the 9th Moscow Mellow Divas
summer concert was held. The concert
was a stunning musical collage of different
musical cultures from all over the
world, performed professionally with a
panache that only hard work and enthusiasm
can produce.
The choir took us on a musical world
tour, starting with negro spirituals,
‘Didn’t my Lord Deliver Daniel’, followed
by ‘Shine On me’ and ‘Ride my
Chariot’. The evening was studded with
various folk songs, such as: ‘The Sailor
and Young Nancy’, and the Irish ‘The
Lark in the Clear Air’. The first half of
the concert was rounded off by a rendition
of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The
59th St. Bridge Song’, and ‘Bridge Over
Troubled Water’.
The second half of the evening was
an adventurous journey into forms
of music not immediately associated
with an expat choir: the Gilbert and
Sullivan operettas ‘The Yeoman of the
Guard’, and the ‘Pirates of Penzance’.
A rendition the theme tune ‘Speak
Softly Love’ from the 1972 film, The
Godfather, followed these stalwart
performances. Latin American songs
followed, then classics from the world
of jazz, even ‘All I Have to Do Is dream’
July 2009
seemed to get greener and more beautiful.
The park below MGU provided a fine
foreground to the symbol of totalitarian
architecture which towers majestically
above it. This was where we turned and
started on a reciprocal course, as one has
to do on rivers. Poshest of all the buildings
we saw – literally so, as it was Portside Out
and Starboard Home – was the Novodevichy
Monastery which did not so much
tower majestically as protrude elegantly
above the luscious spring greenery surrounding
it. I think we tied up later and
disembarked.
Ian Mitchell
ber’s office in Moscow, about the yacht
Britannia. It is a little known fact that
a replica of the famous and beautiful
boat has been built, under contract
to a Norwegian owner, in a Russian
shipyard at Arkhangelsk. The original
Britannia was designed and built in
Scotland, in 1893, for the then-Prince
of Wales, later King Edward VII. It was
so fast that, although it never com-
by the Everly Brothers. The evening
was completed by a medley of numbers
from the stage show and film,
Brigadoon.
peted in the America’s Cup, it beat the
American holder of the cup when racing
in Scottish waters. Its most devoted
skipper was Edward’s son, George
V. He willed that the boat be sunk after
his death, so that it would never suffer
the indignity of decay. Now in a joint,
British-Norwegian-Russian effort, the
great memory is to be revived.
Ian Mitchell
The sheer variety of musical styles
surprised the uninitiated, like me, unused
to the high standards maintained
by the Moscow Mellow Divas choir. Hats
off to the choir’s organizer and musical
director Sharon Wilson.
All proceeds raised during the evening
went to the charities: Preodelenie,
Nastenka and the ARK Open Arts Theater,
three extremely worthwhile children’s
charities working in Moscow.
Nine members of the Mellow Divas
choir are soon to leave Moscow, and
the choir is seeking musically-minded
people who may not have previously
performed on the world stage [joke].
For further details, please contact Sharon
Wilson: swsmw52@gmail.com
John Harrison