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Washington, D.C., July 3, 2001 – For three days of this Fourth of July week, Moscow will swing to the sounds of jazz in honor of the late Voice of America (VOA) jazzman Willis Conover. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow, in conjunction with the Moscow Jazz Engagement, is sponsoring the Willis Conover Jazz Festival as part of its Independence Day celebration, from July 4-6.

Conover, who died in 1996 after four decades and some 20,000 programs at VOA, introduced jazz behind the Iron Curtain through his Music USA program, which aired six nights a week.

According to the Washington Post, Conover “may have been among the best known and most beloved of Americans, with the largest, most loyal radio audience in the world: In the long run, he proved to be perhaps the most effective of all ambassadors – a goodwill emissary who tuned the world on to jazz, which he considered America’s greatest contribution to the music of the 20th century.” 

The festival, which will be held in Moscow’s thousand-seat Central House of Cinematographers under the directorship of composer Yuriy Saul’skiy, will feature performances by jazz musician Michael Becker and his band and Russian jazz musicians including Aleksey Kozlov, German Luk’yanov, Aleksey Kuznetsov, Igor Bril’, and Georgiy Garanyan. 

The Voice of America is a multimedia broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government. VOA broadcasts over 900 hours of news, informational, educational, and cultural programming every week to some 91 million worldwide.  Programs are produced and broadcast in English and 52 other languages.

For additional information, please contact the Office of External Affairs at (202) 619-2538 or send email to pubaff@voa.gov.