Magen Solomon, Artistic Director

Charles Griffin

Charles Griffin is a resident of Kew Gardens, New York. The text of the work which San Francisco Choral Artists will premiere in these concerts is by Anna Akhmatova, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1889 and lived there through the terrible times of the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s reign, dying in 1966. Unlike many of her contemporaries in the intelligentsia, she elected to remain in Russia at great personal risk. This small poem is a beautiful testament to how the will of the people and the reality of the state can be so painfully at odds with one another. Hear additional details on Anna Akhmatova’s story during the concert.