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Official website of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival
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Official website of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival
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ru en
Official website of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival
18 September 2017

Central Military Orchestra of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is taking part in the Military Music Festival named in honor of Arno Babajanyan in Armenia

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The Russian-Armenian Interstate Military Music Festival «Nothing Matters More than Serving Your Country» named in honor of the well-known Soviet composer Arno Babajanyan will be held for the first time ever in Armenia on September 18–20. Russia is represented at the Festival by the Central Military Orchestra of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

The Festival was started in 2017 by the International Fund in Memory of Arno Babajanyan and supported by the Ministries of Defense of the Russian Federation and Armenia. The mission of the musical forum is to join the efforts aimed at building solidarity between the Russians and the Armenians and closer cooperation, which includes, among other spheres, the arts, patriotic and moral education of the youth.

«In both 2016 and 2017, the representatives of the Fund in memory of the outstanding Soviet composer Arno Babajanyan visited the International Military Music Festival «Spasskaya Tower», in which the Central Military Orchestra of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation regularly participates. It was then that the idea came to hold the Russian-Armenian Interstate Military Music Festival," said Chief of the Central Military Orchestra of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, Colonel Sergey Durygin. «Russia and Armenia have long-established relations of friendship. Our ancestors were fighting together against the German-Fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War. Today in Vanadzor we participated in ceremonial wreath laying to the Memorial commemorating Russian and Armenian soldiers killed in the battle of the Pambak — one of the crucial battles of the 1804–1813 Russo-Persian War. There are things and persons we are to bear in our memory and to be proud of, so we were glad to be invited to the Festival».

At the ceremonial wreath laying the Russian musicians were welcomed with the bread and salt. The guests were presented with the Armenian folk dance Kochari. The Armenian solders were dancing Kochari by the Reichstag walls in May 1945. The ceremonial laying itself was accompanied by the «Farewell of Slavianka» march performed by the Central Military Band of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

The first performance of the Festival will be held today, on September 18, in the city of Vanadzor. The bandmasters will be: Chief of the Military Bands' Service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation — the chief bandmaster, Colonel Timofey Mayakin, Chief of the Military Bands' Service — the chief bandmaster of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, Colonel Armen Pogosyan, and Chief of the Central Military Band of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Colonel Sergey Durygin.

«As soon as the «Spasskaya Tower» Festival in the Red Square was over, we moved to Sakhalin to take part in the Festival «Spasskaya Tower on Sakhalin», and now we are here, in Armenia," says Timofey Mayakin. «Such events not only promote the military music culture, but also, and that’s much more important, contribute to the interstate cooperation development and advocate peace initiatives among the defense departments of different countries.»

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