Slowik first established his international reputation primarily as a cellist and viola da gamba player through his work with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, Castle Trio, Smithson String Quartet, Axelrod Quartet, and with Anner Bylsma’s L’Archibudelli.
 Conductor of the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra since 1988, he became conductor of the Santa Fe Bach Festival in 1998, and led the Santa Fe Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra from 1999 to 2004.
 He has been a soloist and/or conductor with numerous other orchestras, including the National Symphony, the Baltimore, Vancouver, and Québec Symphonies, the Filharmonia Sudecka, the Pleven Philharmonic, and the Cleveland Orchestra.
 His involvement with 20th-century art music included many seasons with Ralph Shapey’s Contemporary Chamber Players and founding membership in the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art’s resident ensemble “Twittering Machine.”
New York Pro Musica was a vocal and instrumental ensemble that specialized in medieval and Renaissance music.
 It was co-founded in 1952, under the name Pro Musica Antiqua, by Noah Greenberg, a choral director, and Bernard Krainis, a recorder player who studied with Erich Katz.
 Other prominent musicians who joined included Russell Oberlin (the first American counter-tenor) and Martha Blackman (the first American gambist) and Frederick Renz, who founded Early Music Foundation after Pro Musica disbanded.
Pro Musica Antiqua is a Polish classical chamber group founded by the flautist Leszek Szarzyński in Olsztyn in 1992.
 The chamber ensemble specializes in baroque and early classical music of Eastern Europe.
John Bruce Yeh (born 1957) is an American clarinetist.
 He has been the assistant principal clarinetist and E-flat clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1977.
 Yeh is the founder and director of the chamber ensemble, Chicago Pro Musica, whose first recording, Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du soldat", won the 1985 Grammy Award for the Best New Classical Artist.
L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale) is a theatrical work "to be read, played, and danced" ("lue, jouée et dansée ") by three actors and one or several dancers, accompanied by a septet of instruments.
 The piece was conceived by Igor Stravinsky and Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz based on a Russian folk tale ("The Runaway Soldier and the Devil") drawn from the collection of Alexander Afanasyev.
Seattle Pro Musica is an American choir, based in Seattle, Washington, performing under the direction of conductor and artistic director Karen P. Thomas.
 Seattle Pro Musica is widely considered to be one of the finest ensembles in the Pacific Northwest, and has received international recognition and acclaim for its CD recordings and live performances.
 Seattle Pro Musica has appeared as a featured ensemble on the NPR radio show "Saint Paul Sunday", has performed by invitation for the World Festival of Women’s Singing 2004, Festival Vancouver 2003 in Canada, the American Guild of Organists National Convention 2000 and the American Choral Directors Association Northwest Division Conventions 2000 and 2006, as well as numerous Northwest festivals.
The Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble (Russian: ) was founded by Dmitri Pokrovsky (1944-1996) together with his wife and life-long partner, Tamara Smyslova, in Moscow in 1973 as an experimental singing group under folk Commission of the URSS Сomposers Union.The appearance of this team completely changed in modern society the understanding and view of folklore.
 For the first time in this Ensemble came together scientific approach to the study of folklore and brilliant stage presentation of it.
 Professional musicians belonging to the city culture had to master a large number very dissimilar styles of Russian village music.
 The Pokrovsky Ensemble became the first professional groups who began to study the Russian folk music from authentic village musicians in numerous folklore expeditions.
 Participants of Pokrovsky Ensemble has been recording, learning and then performing very different traditions, styles and manners of folk singing, playing and dancing, trying to penetrate the rules of its existence, understand the laws of its development.
 Dmitri Pokrovsky was one of the first musicians who tried to bridge the gap between the old and new music.
 The credo of The Pokrovsky Ensemble that Russian traditional folk music is a living treasure of Russian culture and is the basis for all classical and contemporary Russian music.
 Pokrovsky Ensemble became the starting point in the search for new ways to stage implementation of folk music and marked the beginning of a Russian wave in the World music.
Karen P. Thomas (born 1957), composer and conductor, is the Artistic Director and Conductor of Seattle Pro Musica and Director of Music at University Unitarian Church.
 With Seattle Pro Musica she has produced six CD recordings, and has received the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence and the ASCAP-Chorus America Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music.
 Ms. Thomas has guest conducted at international festivals in Europe and North America, and has served on the boards of the American Choral Director's Association for Washington State, the Conductor's Guild, the League-ISCM and the International Alliance for Women in Music.
 Ms. Thomas is a recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and ASCAP, among others.
 Her compositions have been awarded prizes in various competitions, and her commissions include works for the Grand Jubilee 2000 in Rome, the American Guild of Organists, and the Goodwill Arts Festival.
 Her compositions are regularly performed internationally, by groups such as The Hilliard Ensemble, and have been praised as "superb work of the utmost sensitivity and beauty."
 Her conducting has received critical praise for its "integrity and high purpose...delivered with taste and impeccable musicianship."
Dead Elvis, also known as Develvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993) by American composer Michael Daugherty, is a 10-minute, single-movement work inspired by the King of Rock-n-Roll, Elvis Presley.
 "Dead Elvis" was commissioned by bassoonist Charles (Chuck) Ullery and The Grand Tetons Festival, and Richard Pittman/Boston Musica Viva.
 The Chamber Ensemble instrumentation calls for solo bassoon, E flat clarinet, trumpet, bass trombone, violin, contrabass, and percussion.
 The premiere was performed by The Grand Tetons Chamber Players, Michael Daugherty conducting and Charles Ullery as soloist, in July 1993.
Pro Musica Hebraica (PMH) is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is "to present Jewish classical music – much of it lost or forgotten – in a concert hall setting."
 Since April 2008, Pro Musica Hebraica has presented 13 concerts, typically two per year at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
 The concert series featured performances by Itzhak Perlman, the ARC Ensemble of Canada, the Apollo Ensemble of Amsterdam, Jascha Nemtsov, and Marc-André Hamelin, among others.
 The concert recordings are not sold, but are available on the website for free.
 PMH concerts are occasionally broadcast on WETA (FM).

Question: What Russian folk tale was the basis for the theatrical work that was the first recording of the chamber ensemble Chicago Pro Musica?
Answer: "The Runaway Soldier and the Devil"