Album Notes

“Superb singing cheered to the echo” Cheddar Valley Gazette Somerset UK November 2005

The haunting strains of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Vespers (1916) echo through the dimly lit chambers of the quarter-mile long cave, as part of a full programme of solo and ensemble performances of russian sacred music and traditional folk Songs, to a sell out audience by the nine singers under their Director Yurii Maruk.
Voskresenije, the dazzling award winning vocal ensemble from St Petersburg Russia, performed an evening Concert, designed by creative director Jeremy Creighton Herbert www.myspace.com/avocadojch for both vocal ensemble and audience to promenade a quarter of a mile underground through the caverns that had been carved by the melt waters of the last Ice Age
This recording captures the essence of a unique event and invites you & your imagination to be there in the evocatively lit ‘cathedrals’ of Gough’s Cave.
On the recording, made possible by Avocado Music Productions, you can also hear how the audience after the interval of russian soup and shots of vodka warm to the hugely entertaining Voskresenije!

Music Director Yurii Maruk was born in West Siberia Russia & has had a distinguished career as an M.D., including choral master of the St. Petersburg Radio & Television Choir.
He founded Voskresenije in 1993. This vocal ensemble all trained at the internationally acclaimed St. Petersburg Conservatoire of Music. Voskresenije have toured Europe extensively for the last 13 years, and this was their first experience of singing in Caves!

The Cheddar Caves & Gorge situated in Cheddar Somerset are one of the hot tourist spots in the United Kingdom.