This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Ukrainian Art Song Project and the sixth time a summer intensive for young singers has been held in Toronto. The final concert on Sunday afternoon in Temerty Theatre was run on similar lines to the previous year. There was a piano in the middle of the room with the audience “in the round” and singers singing from different places in the room.
Sunday afternoon in the Temerty Theatre the participants in this year’s Ukrainian art song intensive presented the results of their efforts during the week. There were eight singers (nine if one adds in mentor Benjamin Butterfield who came in for a couple of numbers). Steven Philcox and Leanne Regehr shared the piano parts.
The Ukrainian Art Song Project’s summer intensive has a concert in Temerty Hall on Sunday at 3pm. It’s possible to sit in on the creation/rehearsal process so I went along yesterday to take a look. I last went to one of the UASP’s concerts a couple of years ago and it was presented as a standard voice/piano recital in Koerner Hall. This is going to be quite different. The songs have been ordered in a way that creates a kind of narrative described as “A poet, having lost their inspiration, retraces their life, striving to reawaken in themselves the passion that once allowed them to create great works of art”. Also, it’s all being staged “in the round”. I got to see the crew work on four or five numbers yesterday and I was impressed by the commitment and the high standard of the singing and acting as well of the sheer speed with which the singers picked up on the ideas thrown at them by “circus master” Pavlo Hunka. It’s dramatic. There’s even an orgy.
I’m passing on information here for anyone who may be interested in a summer program in Ukrainian Art Song organised by the Ukrainian Art Song Project. It’s a week long course at UoT running from August 7th to 13th headed up by baritone Pavlo Hunka. I’m familiar with Hunka’s work with the UASP but not as a teacher so I’m signal boosting here not endorsing! Full details (MS Word) are here.
Stefania Turkewich
Yesterday, for the second time inside a week, I found myself at a musical event celebrating a nation and a nationalism not my own. It’s a rather weird experience (1). The first had been a performance of Dvoràk’s Jakobin, not reviewed here as I was reviewing for Opera Canada, and yesterday was the launch of the CD set Galicians 1; the fourth instalment of the Ukrainian Art Song Project. This latter is the lovechild of British Ukrainian bass-baritone Pavlo Hunka. Indeed it’s almost an obsession. He has tracked down scores for 1000 largely unknown art songs by Ukrainian composers and has plans for them all to be recorded by 2020. The latest bunch are by Galician composers Denys Sichynsky, Stanyslav Liudkevych, Vasyl Barvinsky and Stefania Turkewich. The party line reason for the neglect of this music is, unsurprisingly, persecution under both Tsarist and Soviet regimes. This was mentioned in at least one of the many introductions and speeches of thanks yesterday and provoked a loud “Absolute rubbish!” from the rather scholarly looking gentleman two seats to my right. It does rather look a bit more complicated with composers holding prestigious conservatory posts but eventually falling foul of someone in the apparatus and getting sent to a labour camp for obscure reasons. I don’t think that was unique to Ukrainians.
operaramblings 