The Ukrainian Artwork Music Undertaking takes place on the Royal Conservatory of Music, starting on August 11, and ending with a live performance on August 17. Since its inaugural 12 months in 2017, the Ukrainian Artwork Music Summer season Institute has supported 43 artists in providing an immersive dive into the style.
For 2025, UASP’s seventh iteration, the lineup contains eight vocalists from Austria, Canada, the US and Ukraine — Sofia Bolonna, Mezzo-soprano; Juliana Hentosz, soprano; Olivia Pryce-Digby, soprano; Catharin Carew, Mezzo-Soprano; Polina Kornyushenko, soprano; Samantha Fullerton, soprano; Lana Pastuszak, soprano; Anna Tanczak, soprano — and pianist Violetta Kurkurina, who’ll spend every week in an intensive examine of the style.
Together with the performers, Myroslav Volynsky from Lviv, Ukraine, joins the 2025 Ukrainian Artwork Music Summer season Institute school as resident composer.
Myroslav Volynsky
Composer Myroslav Volynsky was born within the village of Pidtesovo, Krasnoyarsk Territory, and lived in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine for a lot of his childhood. There, he studied at and graduated from the Music and Pedagogy School of the Ivano-Frankivsk Pedagogical Institute (now the College).
He went on to check in Lviv on the Mykola Lysenko Lviv State Conservatory, the place he graduate with a level in composition. Along with his compositions, Myroslav taught composition on the Lviv Secondary Particular Music Boarding College, and plenty of of his college students have gone on to competitors wins and worldwide recognition.
Volynsky has composed many bigger scale works, together with seven operas, three oratorios, cantatas, symphonic works, choral, vocal, chamber music, and instrumental music of assorted genres.
Myroslav Volynsky’s artwork songs have been studied and carried out by many individuals of the Ukrainian Artwork Music Summer season Institutes.
LvT requested Volynsky a couple of questions on Ukrainian artwork music.
From the Ukrainian Artwork Music Summer season Institute 2024:
Myroslav Volynsky: Q&A
LvT: How necessary is artwork music to Ukrainian tradition?
MV: There’s a direct connection between Ukrainian folks songs and artwork songs. In spite of everything, every folks music additionally had its personal writer. Some folks songs have such a fancy and ideal melody and fantastic poetic textual content that solely a really proficient individual may create them.
Sadly, the authorship of such songs was not recorded, and later they had been utterly forgotten. The music was handed down from mouth to mouth. Nevertheless, now it has been doable to ascertain the authorship of some songs that till lately had been thought-about folks. Examples are “A Cossack Travelled Throughout the Danube” (phrases and music by Semen Klymovsky), “I Have a look at the Sky” (phrases by Mykhailo Petrenko, music by Lyudmila Oleksandrova) and plenty of others.
Some artwork songs are sung not solely in live performance halls, but in addition in on a regular basis life and are thought-about folks. For instance, “Oh, You, Lady from a Nut of a Grain” (music by Anatoly Kos-Anatolsky, phrases by Ivan Franko), “Oh, within the Meadow, a Pink Viburnum” (phrases and music by Stepan Charnetsky). Immediately, the Ukrainian artwork music has develop into an integral a part of chamber music.
LvT: Are there any particular options or components in your music that you’d name uniquely Ukrainian?
MV: When creating music, I pay major consideration to the content material and thought of the work. Relying on them, I exploit sure components of musical expressiveness. In some works which have a folks theme, there are components that emphasize the Ukrainian character of the music: particular modal, rhythmic, or intonation units. For instance, “A Considered a Poor Widow and Three Sons” (phrases by Oleksandr Oles).
Along with purely Ukrainian modes and intonations (the Dumy mode and the Hutsul mode), my works additionally include Jewish klezmer, oriental melodies, and components of jazz. And once I thought-about it obligatory, I even used dodecaphony.
LvT: You’ve got created a wide range of works. What attracts you specifically about artwork music?
MV: I’ve created works in all kinds of genres of educational music. Nevertheless, my favorite style was and stays opera. And the artwork music, in my understanding, could be very near opera. It’s like an opera in miniature, a mono-opera, typically like a psychological drama, by which in a brief time frame the hero experiences a concentrated cluster of emotions: religion and disbelief, hopes and doubts.
LvT: How tough is it to proceed to do your job throughout the battle?
MV: I feel it’s much more necessary to proceed. Everybody ought to proceed to do their job, to not retreat from their calling. Though within the first months of the battle I couldn’t write, not to mention method the piano. It appeared unacceptable to set myself any musical duties whereas folks had been dying.
However throughout this horrible interval, many musicians discovered themselves overseas. They wanted works by Ukrainian composers to symbolize their nation. And sometimes these had been teams of very completely different instrumental ensembles for which there was no repertoire. So little by little, my return to creativity occurred, and the conclusion that tradition, artwork is necessary, they’re representatives of Ukraine on this planet.
Ukrainian Artwork Music Summer season Institute: Live performance August 17
Different school members this 12 months embody co-director Dr. Melanie Turgeon, co-director and vocal coach Benjamin Butterfield, vocal coach Andrea Ludwig, and collaborative pianists Stephen Philcox and Dr. Leanne Regehr.
Together with the work of Volynsky, the live performance program will characteristic songs by Mykola Lysenko, Petro Haidamaka, Ostap Nyzhankivsky, Yakiv Stepovy, Kyrylo Stetsenko, and Stefania Turkewich.
- Discover live performance particulars and tickets [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 many years, and a inventive writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
