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A humble composer’s tribute to Stalin
For me, one of the most fascinating subjects in music history is the life and work of composers in the Soviet Union. It is close to my family history and always forces me to imagine my life had I been born 60 years earlier. When I was in Ukraine last fall, my grandfather showed me…
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Flatten your throat and sing
“Flatten your throat and send a nasty sound into your teeth.” That’s roughly what we were trying to do in the student folk ensemble led by the well-known Ukrainian ethnomusicologist Yevhen Yefremov. This week I was very lucky to sit in on a lecture on the modal organization of Ukrainian folksong given by professor Yefremov…
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Ukraine: first days
Achievements to date: learning how to use a cell phone with Russian menus and making a whole THREE phone calls to strangers (1 in Russian, 2 in Ukrainian). My sister and I left Canada last Friday. Two days and several long layovers later, we have finally arrived in Kiev. I was disappointed to discover that…
