Edvard Tchivzhel

Edvard Tchivzhel was born into a musical family in St. Petersburg, Russia (formerly Leningrad, USSR). He graduated from the prestigious Leningrad Conservatory, which produced notable alumni such as Jascha Heifetz, Mariss Jansons, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dmitri Shostakovich, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Yuri Temirkanov, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with degrees in piano and conducting. He then completed three years of postgraduate study under Latvian conductor, Arvid Jansons (father of Mariss Jansons). Tchivzhel was the winner of the Third Soviet Conductor's Competition in Moscow, while still a student.[1]

Tchivzhel was assistant conductor to conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra from 1974 until 1977. He was also the permanent guest conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and has frequently conducted the Moscow Philharmonic, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Kirov Theatre of Opera and Ballet (now the Mariinsky Theatre ) as well as other orchestras in the former Soviet Union. He served as associate conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, led by Evgeny Svetlanov.[2]

In 1991, during a month-long tour with USSR State Symphony, Tchivzhel told his host in Greenville, South Carolina, that he wanted to defect to the United States. To insure that he would have a better chance at receiving political asylum, a local attorney arranged for him to make uncomplimentary public comments about the Soviet Union to an obscure agricultural newsletter. When the symphony left from its last stop in Washington, D.C., to return to Moscow, Tchivzel was whisked away by armed FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Services agents. He and his wife became U.S. citizens in 1999.[3] At each symphony performance in Greenville, he faces the audience to conduct “The Star-Spangled Banner.”[4]