-
Teach your daughters
I can finally share the live recording of Teach your daughters, which I premiered with Katha Zinn and Illya Filshtinskiy from aTonalHits on a Princeton Sound Kitchen Concert on March 1. Because of the difficulty of the subject matter, this piece took a very long time to take shape. This piece for voice, violin and prepared piano is…
-
Interview on SoundLab
Paul Steenhuissen recently interviewed me for his podcast series SoundLab. The interview was commissioned by Toronto’s New Music Concerts in preparation for the Ukrainian-Canadian Connection concert happening on April 4th, which will feature the premiere of my piece Weeping. Paul asked some very probing and difficult questions, which forced me to define my compositional practice and…
-
Toss a flower on the water
Here’s a lovely new recording of my piano trio Toss a flower on the water. This slightly revised version was performed in Kamloops on May 25 and features Annette Dominik (violin), Martin Kratky (cello) and Naomi Cloutier (piano) of the Chamber Musicians of Kamloops.
-
Piano Trio Premiere
On Wednesday (March 5), the Gryphon Trio will premiere my piano trio, Toss a flower on the water, which was created as part of the Soundstreams Emerging Composers’ Workshop. The performance will take place in the lobby of Roy Thomson Hall as part of a pre-concert event happening at TSO’s New Creations Festival, starting at 7:15 pm. The…
-
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…
-
Thin Edge on the Bridal Train
I would like to invite all those who live in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto or Montreal to attend one of the concerts given by the Thin Edge New Music Collective in the next couple of weeks. Thin Edge is touring with a very unique combination of instruments – flute, violin, accordion and piano – and will…
-
Rediscovering hope at the Banff Centre
I just returned to Vancouver from a three-week creative residency at the Banff Centre. The 15-hour bus ride through Beautiful British Columbia gave me some time to take stock of the last 18 months of my life. Since August 2011, I have moved between Canada’s coasts three times, officially held three addresses plus four transient…
-
Travel back in time
In the last days of September, Maria and I visited two villages in the Bobrovyts’kyi district of Chernihivs’ka region to collect songs, stories and memories. A bus ride shaky enough to break teeth or induce labour took us to Kozats’ke (Козацьке), where a welcoming party of babushka-clad old ladies was awaiting us by the village…
-
Sounds of Kiev: Main train station
This recording was taken in the main hall of the beautiful passenger train station in Kiev, Ukraine.
-
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…
