Traditsiya (2025) traces the Yale Russian Chorus’ more than 70-year history, exploring how generations of American singers have engaged with Russian choral traditions, language, and culture. The documentary film features archival footage and images, recent interviews, and performances from both current members and alumni. Through personal anecdotes, exclusive concert footage, and historical perspectives, Traditsiya highlights how music has long served as a cultural bridge between the U.S. and Russia. 

Please join us on Friday, June 27, 2025, for a virtual screening of this documentary film, followed by a post-screening discussion and live audience Q&A between Yale Russian Chorus Alumni members, Lewis Johnson and Harald Hille. Tune in to ask your questions live!

Film Screening: from 19:00–19:40 Moscow Time

Live Discussion and Q&A: from 19:40–20:30 Moscow Time

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Dr. W. Lewis Johnson is the Director of External Relations of the YRC Alumni Association, and is the developer and manager of the YRCAA’s YouTube and VKontakte channels. He joined the Yale Russian Chorus in 1982. In the summer of 2025, he led the Chorus on a tour of Georgia and Armenia. He is the editor of the YRCAA’s two-volume songbook of choral music from Georgia, Armenia, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the USA. He is also CEO of Alelo Inc., a company that develops artificial-intelligence-powered learning tools for foreign languages and cultures. He served for two years as Acting Music Director at St. Augustine By-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Santa Monica, CA, and introduced Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, and Georgian sacred music to his church choir. He studied voice at Yale and at the Music Academy of the West, and studied choral conducting with Marika Kuzma of U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Johnson received a Ph.D. in computer science (artificial intelligence) from Yale University, and graduated summa cum laude in linguistics from Princeton University.

Harald Hille was born in New England to Scandinavian parents and was a student at Yale University in the 1960s in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department. He sang in the Russian Chorus during those years and went on the 1960 summer tour to the USSR. After graduating from Yale, Hille taught Russian language at Yale for a few years and then became a translator and précis-writer at the United Nations in 1975. He worked mainly at the New York City Headquarters, but also at the Geneva Headquarters in Switzerland for 3 years. Hille has continued to sing in the Chorus in later years as an alumnus. After retirement from the United Nations in 2000, he did some freelance translation and translated a couple of Swedish novels. He returned to teaching in 2017, this time as a volunteer teaching English to immigrants, mainly from Latin America, Haiti, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

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