Classical Movements

Classical Movements Inc.

Company type	Private corporation
Industry	Travel, Music
Founded	1992
Founder	Neeta Helms Jacques Vallerand-Parisi
Headquarters	Alexandria, Virginia , USA
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Neeta Helms (President)
Services	Travel management Organizing live music concerts
Divisions	Blue Heart Travel Inc.
Website	www.classicalmovements.com

Classical Movements is an American concert touring company in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in concert and travel arrangements worldwide for professional symphonies and choruses as well as conservatory, university, and youth ensembles. Classical Movements produces two choral festivals: Ihlombe! South African Choral Festival and Serenade! Washington D.C. Choral Festival,^[1] in addition to the young artists music festival, Prague Summer Nights.^[2] It also commissions new works from Pulitzer, MacArthur and Grammy-winning composers through its Eric Daniel Helms New Music Program.^[3]

Previously known as Blue Heart Travel, Inc, the company was established in October 1992 by Neeta Helms and Jacques Vallerand-Parisi with a base in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. The company began with tours to Russia and Ukraine one year after the Soviet Union fell and soon added destinations such as Croatia, Eastern Europe, Turkey, South Africa, and Cuba.^[4][5]

Since 1997, Classical Movements has been based in Alexandria, Virginia.^[6]

In 2014, Americans for the Arts, an arts advocacy organization in the United States, awarded Classical Movements the BCA10: Best Businesses Partnering with the Arts in America.^[7]

• President (1992 - 2008): Jacques Vallerand-Parisi
• President (2008–present): Neeta Helms

Classical Movements has been involved in numerous cultural diplomacy events.

A year after its founding, in 1993, Classical Movements took the Choral Arts Society of Washington on tour to Moscow, Russia with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. This concert marked the first time any event other than a military parade had taken place in the Red Square. Among the audience of 100,000 was President Boris Yeltsin as millions more watched and listened worldwide to the live broadcast.^[8]

Classical Movements began touring to South Africa in 1994 shortly after apartheid was abolished and Nelson Mandela was elected president.^[9]

In 1995, Classical Movements became the first American company to offer tours in Croatia after the end of the Croat–Bosniak War, as well as in China becoming one of the first travel companies in the country following the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, and in Vietnam following the new United States Embassy in Hanoi.^{[citation needed]}

Several years later in 2003, the United States Department of State and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts invited the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to perform in Washington, alongside Leonard Slatkin's National Symphony Orchestra. Classical Movements arranged for the Iraqi musicians' travel from Baghdad.^[10]

According to its president Neeta Helms, Classical Movements worked for Google in 2009 to arrange all the travel and logistics for the debut of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, where musicians from across the globe electronically met to perform at Carnegie Hall. In 2011, there was a reprise at the Sydney Opera House.^[11]

In 2010, Classical Movements arranged the travel for the first joint concert for American and Cuban choirs in Havana on the 4th of July.^[12] Later in 2015 the company arranged a Cuban tour with Minnesota Orchestra despite there being no official diplomatic ties yet between the United States and Cuba.^[13]

Classical Movements was also involved in the official United States memorial service for Nelson Mandela at Washington National Cathedral in 2013 where on behalf of the South African Ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, they invited original Ihlombe! participants Morgan State University Choir and Pacific Boychoir.^[14]

Classical Movements organizes more than 200 concerts on 60 tours each season in 145 countries.^[15]

Classical Movements currently owns and produces two annual international choral festivals and a young artists music festival.

• Ihlombe! South African Choral Festival (since 2009) is the largest choral gathering in South Africa^[16] and is hosted in Cape Town, Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Soweto. Concerts include 10-20 South African choirs, workshops, African drumming, and dancing.^[17]
• Serenade! Washington, DC Choral Festival (since 2011) features cultural and musical exchanges with national and international choirs with outreach events, workshops, and performances. Venues have included John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Strathmore Music Center, George Washington Masonic National Memorial, and New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.^[18]
• Prague Summer Nights: Young Artists Music Festival (since 2015) is a 30-day program for singers and instrumentalists to receive professional performance training and experiences. The vocalists are mentored by a professional faculty of musicians who hold positions at major universities and conservatories or have major performing careers. It includes fully staged opera, directed by the operatic baritone Sherrill Milnes, as well as orchestral concerts, chamber music, solo recitals, and cabaret performed in historic halls in Tábor, Prague, and Salzburg.

Since founding the Eric Daniel Helms New Music Program in 2005, Classical Movements has commissioned composers from 20 different countries to create more than 50 new works. Named after Neeta Helms’s late father, the Eric Daniel Helms New Music Program encourages international collaboration. Alumni include American John Corigliano, Chinese-American Bright Sheng, and Cuban Tania León among many others of numerous nationalities. Altogether the composers in the program have won 5 Grammys, 4 Pulitzers, 1 Oscar, and 1 MacArthur.

In 2017, the Syrian composer Kinan Azmeh became Classical Movements' first Composer-in-Residence.^[19]

Year	Composer	Work	Premiere
2017	Oscar Escalada	Misa para el Tercer Mundo (Mass for the Third World)	Melodia! South American Choral Festival
2017	Sydney Guillaume	Ansanm-Ansanm	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Ēriks Ešenvalds	High Flight	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Bernat Vivancos	L’ametller (The Almond Tree)	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Madhup Mudgal	Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam (The World is One Family)	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Con Fullam	Under One Sky	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Milena Jeliazkova & Milena Roudeva	Orissiya (Destiny)	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Egschiglen	Freedom of the Steppe	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Insingizi	Bom Bom Jeys (It is important to know who we are…)	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Christoph Göbel		Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Siraj		Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2017	Billy Childs	In Gratitude	Chorus America
2017	Mokale Koapeng	Wings of Peace and Love: Reflections on Bheki Mseleku	University of Pretoria
2016	Kristin Kuster	Moxie	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Christopher Rouse	Processional	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Joan Tower	Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman #6	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Libby Larsen	Earth (Holst Trope)	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	James Lee III	Thurgood's Rhapsody	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Caroline Shaw	Baltimore Bomb	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Lori Laitman	Unsung	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	TJ Cole	Double Play	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Jonathan Leshnoff	Dancin' Blue Crabs	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Christopher Theofanidis	The Game	Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary season
2016	Andrea Ramsey	The Gift to Sing	George Washington University
2015	Jim Papoulis	Sounds of a New Generation	New World Center
2015	André Thomas	Gloria (Glory to God)	ACDA National Conference
2015	Emilio Solé Sempere	Hearts Beat Together	ACDA National Conference
2015	Sarah Quartel	Wide Open Spaces	ACDA National Conference
2015	Will Todd	Gloria	ACDA National Conference
2015	Jay Broeker	Peace Like A River	ACDA National Conference
2014	Piret Rips-Laul	Salve Regina	Williamsburg, Virginia
2013	Andrew Gant	Psalm World	Groton School Chapel
2012	Bright Sheng	A Porter's Song	Woolsey Hall (Yale Glee Club)
2012	Aaron Jensen	We Are as One	Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
2012	Stephen Paulus	When Music Sounds	Chorus America
2012	Derek Bermel	YPChant	Carnegie Hall
2012	John Corigliano	Upon Julia's Clothes	Carnegie Hall
2012	Douglas J. Cuomo	How to Survive in the Woods	Carnegie Hall
2012	David Del Tredici	Credo Fugue	Carnegie Hall
2012	Paquito D'Rivera	UN Minuto	Carnegie Hall
2012	Michael Gordon	Cinnamon	Carnegie Hall
2012	Bright Sheng	Thirty-Mile Village	Carnegie Hall
2012	Joan Tower	Descent	Carnegie Hall
2012	Ken Berg	The Cremation of Sam McGee	Parker Playhouse
2011	Olli Kortekangas	Three Studies	Children's Chorus of Washington's 15th Anniversary
2011	Tania León	Rimas Tropicales	Chorus America
2011	David Rimelis	OrchKids Nation	Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
2010	Mokale Koapeng	Letlang Bana	Ihlombe! South African Choral Festival
2009	Stephen Carletti	Evening Canticles	St. George's Cathedral
2009	Jorge Córdoba Valencia	Tu	Sala Nezahualcoyotl (Mexico City)
2008	Daniel Brewbaker	El Angel	Melodia! South American Music Festival
2006	Oscar Escalada	Tu	Melodia! South American Music Festival

• Official website
• Prague Summer Nights
• Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival
• Ihlombe! South African Choral Festival
• Audio file: People of Note with Richard Cock & Neeta Helms, President of Classical Movements broadcast on Classic FM (South Africa), 10 August 2010