A series of three events sponsored by the Greater New York Committee for Russian Relief to raise money to re-equip the First Central Medical Institute of Moscow was announced in an ad that ran in the Sunday New York Times on April 14. The opening event was a concert of American Folk music April 20 at Carnegie Hall; militantly leftist songwriter Earl Robinson was chairman. The second event of the series was a concert of Modern American Music at Carnegie Hall on May 2 during which Marc Blitzstein would sing and play excerpts from his musical in progress. This concert also featured violinist Isaac Stern, Dean Dixon conducting the American Youth Orchestra in compositions by Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin; Muriel Smith, star of "Carmen Jones" and tenor Charles Holland. The third event was devoted to The American Dance and would be held May 25 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Tickets were $1.80 to $3.60.
The Committee for Russian Relief was a cross between a Popular Front organization and a true humanitarian effort with broad support. Some non-Communist organizations on the left, like the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, refused to support the committee's activities because they perceived it as Communist-dominated. Individuals who grew up in Communist households in the 1940s have written that these concerts were big events for their families. Many of the most famous participants. such as Robinson, Blitzstein, Bernstein. Copland and Pete Seeger, were associated closely with numerous front organizations and some of them were or had been party members at some time. Some Russian Relief events were used as platforms to denounce Wall Street war mongers and British imperialists and to laud the policies of the peace-loving Comrade Stalin. But non-Communists, like the Russian-born Stern, were involved as well. It is notable that these concerts gave a showcase to African American artists like Dixon, Smith and Holland whose opportunities in the classical music world were otherwise limited although not, judging from the concert ads in the Times, not negligible at least in New York.
The Carnegie Hall folk music concert had been put together by Alan Lomax and a group of leftist performers and musicologists who had formed People's Songs a few months earlier. They included Robinson, Irwin Silber and Pete Seeger. Lomax emceed the event. According to Silber, the event's sponsors included poet Carl Sandburg, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, former New York Governor Herbert Lehman, patrician record executive John Hammond and actress Helen Hayes, reflecting the broad-based support the organization still enjoyed at this moment in time. According to Silber's recollections Sophie Maslow's New Dance Group performed as did a number of artists associated with People's Songs including Leadbelly, Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Josh White and the Hall Johnson Choir. The ad in The Sunday Times also included Susan Reed, John Jacob Niles and Edith Allaire among the performers. According to the listing in The New Yorker, Billie Holiday was also on the bill. The concert was so successful that it led to a series of midnight folk concerts at Town Hall sponsored by People's Songs.