Antenna Sud

Among the appointments of this month, on Monday 31st of May, at 08.00pm, at St Nicholas’Basilica there will be a concert by Russia Cristiana choir “the praise and the grace. The chant and the imagine in the Byzantine-Slavic religious tradition”, followed by a journey in the Orthodox iconographic tradition. The one hour and an half concert is promoted by Centro Culturale of Bari in collaboration with the cultural municipal councillorship. Today’s Russia Cristiana Choir joins a choir, formed in Milan in the early ‘60s, called Ars Nova. Father Romano Scalfi, founder of Russia Cristiana, met some Ars Nova’s singers and proposed them to come along with him for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine-Slavic rite, which is also entirely sung. Ars Nova keenly accepted it, enriching more and more its medieval/renaissance repertoire with liturgical (and also folk) songs of the Eastern tradition. The Russian Cristiana Choir keeps deepening its Eastern/ Western patrimony ( Russian liturgical polyphony, motets, lauds, cantigas) and keeps growing in awareness of its work through the proposal of expressive, complementary and different forms continually in relation with one another. The beauty and the unity of both traditions which is expressed in chants and imagines with an evocatory deep power, is the riches the choir draws from and wants to be the bearer of.