RAGE frontman Peter "Peavy" Wagner has issued the following update:

"Peavy here, to report about our latest tour together with the Lingua Mortis Orchestra in Russia and Ukraina. The background was the 10th anniversary of our orchestra phase, which was marked by releases as Lingua Mortis, XIII and Ghosts, or rather a tour and lots of festival shows with the Lingua Mortis Orchestra that time. We have been the first metal band, who melted together both music styles, metal & classic, to a homogeneous and bombastic music. Since that time, many other bands (e.g. METALLICA), have imitated that, however, just a few got beyond simplistic background music with a few string surfaces, which you can also do with keyboards.

That's 10 years ago, so we thought it was appropriate, to incorporate this topic again in our music, what precipitated also in parts of our last studio album, Speak Of The Dead ('Suite Lingua Mortis') and in some exclusive live shows in this year. So here a report about Part 1 of our anniversary orchestra shows (Part 2 will follow in July/August, see live dates).

Thanks for a perfect work to our crew, Charly (sound), Nikolay Morosov (light) and Sergej Stepanov (stage), as well as the sinfonic orchestra of the national music akademy of Minsk (Belarus), Andrei Zubrych, who was a valuable help during the musical prearrangements (as an fantasic pianist anyway) and our brilliant conductor Professor Mikhail Kazinets, as well as Rina Lee as tour manager, the concert organizer and last but not least, I would like to express my personal thanks to Victor, as without his indefatigable engagement the whole project wouldn't be possible.

Charly, Andre and myself started on April 17th. The first station was Minsk in Belarus. There our orchestra is based, and first, intensive rehearsal was announced, at last, our real complex music cannot be transposed just spontaneous with so many musicians. Victor arrived already a week earlier, to work out the musical basis together with the orchestra, and to organize our rental-equipment. We rehearsed in the national philharmony, a patriarchal institution, in which also Victor's father Dmitri, one of the most distinguished Russian composers of the present time, is acting. We had scheduled just a week for that, in this time, we worked out song by song, in which the monumental works 'Suite Lingua Mortis', the 'Lingua Mortis Medley' but also both Bourrees of J.S.Bach (in Victor's arrangement, check 'Majesty & Passion' and 'Soundchaser') requires most activity. Day by day we became better, so at the end we even had time to rehearse some show elements, like solo parts and jams. The rehearsals were visited by more and more people ever day, so at the end there already was a kind of concert feeling. Unfortunately, the weather in Minsk became bad again (snow flurry) and expeditiously I caught a cold, which fortunately didn't restrict my vocal performances..."

Go to this location to check out the complete tour diary.