The Rachmaninoff Festival Choir is a specialized chorus combining members of the Down East Singers, a community chorus based in Thomaston, Maine, and the Bowdoin College Chorus in Brunswick, Maine. Down East Singers was founded in 1979 and is mid-coast Maine's largest community chorus. The Bowdoin College Chorus was founded in 1992 and includes students, faculty, staff, and area community members. Dr. Anthony Antolini, professor of music at Bowdoin conducts all three groups.

Specializing the music of Russia and the other Slavic nations, the choir has performed throughout Maine as well as in Boston, New York City, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Montreal, Canada. In the summer of 2002, the choir embarked on a two-week concert tour of major cities in European Russia, Siberia, and the Russian Far East. The choir's CD recording of Rachmaninoff's "Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom" received critical acclaim in the November, 1996 American Record Guide.

A Bowdoin graduate, the choir's conductor earned graduate degrees at Stanford University in music and Slavic studies. His specialty is Russian choral music. In 1988, Antolini published the first modern American edition of Rachmaninoff's "Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom" and toured the United States and the major cities of the former Soviet Union with acclaimed performances of that work. An award-winning television documentary on this subject, Rediscovering Rachmaninoff, has been aired nationally on public television and overseas.

For more information about the choir, contact Business Manager Debbie Handy at 207-236-8792.