Mikhail Gorbachev Wins a Grammy

Mikhail Gorbachev won a Grammy Award on Sunday. He was honored in the spoken word album for children category for a project he worked on with fellow winners, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and a well-known Italian actress Sophia Loren.

None of them was at the ceremony to pick up the award for “Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/ Beintus: Wolf Tracks,” a new version of the classic children's musical “Peter and the Wolf” by Sergey Prokofiev.
The recording was carried out at the premises of the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and in Geneva where conductor Kent Nagano worked with Clinton and Loren.

New music for the reworking was commissioned by the Russian National Orchestra (RNO) from French composer Jean-Pascal Beintus, while the new text is by the US writer Walt Kraemer.
Mikhail Gorbachev, a noted campaigner for ecological causes, confirmed that he will hand the proceeds for his contribution to the Green Cross International, the environmental organization he founded in 1993.

The recording was one of a series of events being organized in Russia to mark the 50th anniversary of Prokofiev's death.

Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953, within a few hours of the death of Joseph Stalin.

You can learn more about the project at the Russian Arts Foundation’s official web-site at:
http://www.russianarts.org/