MOSCOW FORUM, International Festival for Contemporary Music

Since 1994, the Moscow Forum Festival takes place every year upon the initiative of the Moscow Conservatory's Center for Contemporary Music. Its artistic director, composer and composition professor Vladimir Tarnopolsky, conceived the Moscow Forum Festival as a panorama of the Russian and international musical avant-garde as well as a discussion panel for the musical cultures of different countries.

The primary duty of the Moscow Forum Festival is to propagate Russian music of the 20th century and to stimulate the creativity of young composers. The festival also tries to compensate the lack of information and the resulting cultural gap regarding the classics of the international avant-garde that evolved in our country due to ideological taboos over the past decades.

Leading Russian musical groups such as the Pokrovsky Folklore Ensemble, the Pekarski Percussion Ensemble, Tatyana Grindenko's Academy of Music, and many more take place in the Festival. The Moscow Forum became the birth place of new Russian groups, among them the Ensemble Opus Posth, the Roslavetz-Trio, and the Twelve Saxophones Ensemble. Well known Russian musicians as Tigran Alikhanov, Alexey Lyubimov, Vladimir Tonkha, Ekaterina Kichigina, Alexander Ivashkin and many more have been performing on Moscow Forum Festival. The keynote musical group of the Festival is the Studio of New Music Ensemble.

The Moscow Forum Festival has gained high esteem in Russia and abroad, as is seen by its list of participants. In various years, the Festival has boasted performances by ensembles and soloists that are without a doubt world leaders in performances of contemporary music, including the Ensemble Modern (Germany), the Klangforum Wien (Austria), the Scharoun ensemble (Germany), De Volharding (The Netherlands), Alternance (France), XX. Century (Austria), the Toscanini Orchestra (Italy), the Arditti Quartet (UK), the Danel Quartet (Belgium), and many more.

Moscow Forum-X
Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory,
Rakhmaninov Hall. April 12, 2007

International recognition of the Moscow Forum Festival is evidenced by numerous reports in leading Russian and foreign publications, among them Izvestia, Moscow News, Nezavisimaya gazeta, Kommerssant Daily, Segodnya, Itogi, Ekspert, Ezhenedelny zhurnal, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Neue Music Zeitung, The Independent, Kultur und Medien, XX-Century Music. Radio reports have been aired on Ekho Moskvy, Orfey, Radio Rossiya, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Deutschlandfunk; television reports have been broadcast on the Kultura Channel.

The mission of the Moscow Forum Festival is to further the formation of new currents in Russian music and its dynamic integration into the international music life.