Out & About
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Russian National Orchestra could not have gotten to its 15th anniversary without the generosity of American donors.
And so the gala in honor of the anniversary was held at the St. Regis on Tuesday with Americans playing the star roles.
The honorary chairwomen were Martha Stewart and Sophia Loren. (Ms. Loren was a narrator, along with Mikhail Gorbachev and President Clinton, of a Russian National Orchestra CD, “Wolf Tracks,” which was nominated for a Grammy in 2004.) The honoree was the former chief architect of Microsoft, Charles Simonyi. Other patrons of the orchestra at the gala included Elizabeth Stribling and Guy Robinson, Elaine Sargent, and Sharon Bush.
While the event included performances by pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist Mikhail Simonyan, the orchestra’s main musical event this week was the kickoff of its American tour at Lincoln Center. The program, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, features Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.
Back home, the orchestra conducts youth outreach and collaborates with conductors from all over the world.
***
Brown University holds the New York kickoff of its “Boldly Brown” capital campaign tonight with a bash for 1,700 guests at the American Museum of Natural History. The fund-raising target is $1.4 billion – more than three times that of any previous campaign. But that’s just par for the course under the university’s president, Ruth Simmons, the first African-American to hold that position at an Ivy League institution. She and celebrity professor Kenneth Miller, a molecular biologist, will be among the speakers.
