19 May 2006 – Philippine Ambassador to Moscow Ernesto V. Llamas reported to the Department of Foreign Affairs that the Philippine Madrigal Singers, currently on tour in Moscow, performed live on Russian radio on 14 May 2006 for a full concert of two hours as part of an ongoing international music festival organized by the premier state-run Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music.

Ambassador Llamas said the 22-member Madz, performing their third straight concert in as many days, presented a panoply of 17 Filipino songs in a two-hour program entitled The Philippines Through Music at the 5th Studio at Malaya Nikitskaya of the government-owned Radio Kultura 91.6 FM station.

The radio program, broadcast to a potential audience of 17 million people in a large swath of European Russia and the Ural Mountains at 19h05 GMT+3 (Moscow time), was also fed to streaming Internet radio at http://wvvw.cultradio.ru/online.html  starting at 23h05 Manila time.

As in the preceding two concerts that preceded it, the studio audience heartily applauded each number, especially such love songs as Dahil Sa Iyo (Because of You), Iniibig Kita (I Love You) and even the whimsical Ikaw Ang Mahal Ko (It Is You I Love), constantly keeping announcer Sergey Markus from filling up airtime immediately after the songs.

"The polyphony of voices is very beautiful," said Olga Mironenko, 20, an international relations major at the Moscow State University, during the 15-minute intermission. “They remind me of a school of fish that makes an unexpected turn, all of a sudden turning everything around it into a silver cloud."

Markus introduced the Russian audience to the sounds of Philippine languages like Tagalog, Bisaya and Maranao, and to both established Filipino composers like Ryan Cayabyab, Francisco Santiago and Francisco Feliciano, or new ones like Jude Edgard Balsamo and Madz member Nilo Alcala II.

Despite being absent in the Russian music scene for at least a quarter century, the Madz, as their fans know them, still struck a familiar tone among the Moscow public.

"Their technique is quite impressive - it's very polished," Tlmur Musayev, choirmaster and senior instructor of the Humanities and Social Studies Faculty of the People's Friendship University (formerly Patrice Lumumba University). "But the tonality mirrors in many ways Russian folk song traditions." He proposed exchanging scores of Filipino and Russian folk songs to broaden each country's song repertoire.

Margarita Karatyguina, head of the international relations department of the Moscow Conservatory and organizer of the 11-country festival, echoed the sentiment. "It would be nice to establish permanent mutual relations between the Madrigals and the choral department of the Moscow Conservatory," she said in the broadcast commentary during the intermission.

Most definitely the Madz would be invited to the fifth edition of the festival next year to sing at the Conservatory halls, she added. Apart from the Philippines and Russia, the festival running on 12-31 May 2006 features artists from Spain, Mexico, Great Britain, US, Cuba, Japan, Lithuania, Czech Republic and India. After the Madz, a trio playing Hindustani music and shakuhachi flutist Makihara Ichiro will perform on May 21 and 28.

The Moscow concerts of the Madrigals, which made an emotional start at the avant-garde DOM Cultural Center and maestro Vladimir Spivakov's prestigious Moscow International Centre for Performing Arts (MMDM) on May 12 and 13, were organized by the Embassy as part of the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.

The event was supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts with the cooperation of the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography and the Russian Foreign Ministry. (Please refer to the accompanying photo release on this subject matter.) END