WASHINGTON, October 8 (By Maria Young for RIA Global) – A glitzy gala at the Russian Embassy in Washington Monday night, featuring two of the biggest names in modern jazz, celebrated a long-standing but often forgotten history of friendship between the United States and Russia that flourished 150 years ago and could serve as a current model for both countries, said organizers.
“We are celebrating the arrival of Russian warships to the ports of New York and San Francisco at the height of our civil war,” a pivotal move in the war that “understandably enhanced the morale” of Union troops, said former US Rep. James Symington, chairman of the nonprofit American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation (ARCCF), at the organization’s 2013 “Friends in Time of War” fete.
A performance by longtime friends, US jazz great Wynton Marsalis and virtuoso Russian musician Igor Butman, a highlight of the evening, was a “demonstration of friendship” Symington said, adding, “It’s a big world, but it needs diplomacy, and we believe music will bring the US and Russia together once again, because nothing is more powerful, and nothing is more needed.”
Butman and Marsalis were both presented with the ARCCF Foundation Award shortly before a joint musical rendition that wowed the spectators and brought the black tie-and-sequin crowd to its feet repeatedly for standing ovations.
“There’s really nothing deeper than the kind of love that music can foster, and I love this man like a brother,” said Marsalis, nodding toward Butman, in comments to RIA Novosti.
“I first heard him on the radio, and on Voice of America, and I was blown away,” Butman told RIA Novosti.
“As soon as we played together,” some 20 years ago, “we felt very close,” Butman said, adding that the two famous musicians also share a love for drinking vodka and eating caviar.
“We can influence the world, we have the power through music,” he said.
“These two musicians you hear now, it’s not that one works and the other doesn’t, or one says he should do it, they both do it together, and that’s what happens when we work together, it’s beautiful,” said famed composer Valery Gergiev, who attended the gala, in an interview with RIA Novosti.
Relations between the two countries have improved in recent weeks, Gergiev said, adding, “They have started to work with each other on the Syria issue, they have started to work within the framework of the UN, and so, the resolution and the work we are doing together, these are positive signs.”
The evening commemorated the arrival of two Russian Navy squadrons to America in September of 1863, shortly after the North had lost several bloody battles to the South in the US Civil War.
A symbol of the friendship between US President Abraham Lincoln and Russia’s Tsar Alexander II, the fleet served as a symbol to the South and its allies that there was a barrier for any ships sent to support the confederacy.
“This is an opportunity to remind ourselves what is good in our relations, and hopefully what will be good again,” said Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, adding, “I think relations between our two countries are much better than the general public believes.”
