Jay Ungar’s “Ashokan Farewell” sounds like traditional music, but of course it was composed for a documentary series that Ken Burns created for PBS, The Civil War.
The YouTube posting of that piece demonstrates the power of music. In addition to providing access to Ungar’s evocative and beautiful performance, comments posted to the page document the widely varied individual reactions the music elicits, serving as a significant emotional touchstone for many, who through it experience an immediate connection to profound moments in their lives.
Some recalled lost loved ones, or weddings. One undoubtedly crystalized the thoughts of many, writing, “I don’t know why, but this song makes me nostalgic of a time I never knew.” The music is poignant and reading the posted comments itself can be an emotional experience.
Last Saturday (23 April) National Public Radio reported how a jazz club in Odesa continues to help residents of that city to cope with the ongoing war. Odesa is a port city in western Ukraine, just 60 nautical miles from the site where the Russian warship Moskva was sunk.
The club, called Perron Number Seven, now offers free outdoor jazz and theatrical performances through a program called Theater on the Balcony. In the story, NPR’s Tim Mak interviewed Yaroslav Trofimov, who co-owns the club with his wife, Julia Bragina. Trofimov said that their biggest weapon was laughter and creativity, and reported that after a performance he “asked the guests, ‘Do we fear? Do we feel fear right now? Are we scared? And people said, ‘No.’”
Also on Saturday, a missile attack on a residential area on the outskirts of Odesa killed 27-year-old Valerie Glodan, her three-month-old daughter, and her mother. Glodan had recently moved in with her mother.
A mother had found ‘a new level of happiness’ when her daughter was born. Then a missile killed them both. (New York Times)
A short video report in the Washington Post described how musicians in Lviv, Ukraine have created music classes for children to help them cope with the experience of the war:
Meanwhile, a newly formed 75-member ensemble, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, created with the help of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, will make an 11-city tour of Europe and the United States in July and August, with proceeds of the tour benefiting Ukrainian artists.
The Ukraine Ministry of Culture will allow male musicians in the orchestra to participate in the tour, despite rules barring men of military age from leaving the country.
Marko Komonko, a Ukrainian violinist who will serve as the orchestra’s concertmaster, said music could be a distraction from the violence. “When you live through all of this, you look at music differently, through different lenses,” he said. “It takes my mind off the war. It allows people to keep living.”
Denouncing War, Ukrainian Musicians Unite for a World Tour (New York Times)
On YouTube, John Rutter explains his need to compose his own setting of “A Ukrainian Prayer” as a response to ongoing events in Ukraine, and performs the piece with The Cambridge Singers. In the comments section he offers links making the score available for free, for the sole use of your own choir, and authorizes the creation of an audio or video recording of the piece without a special license.
With Russia beginning a new phase of its brutal assault on Ukraine, it seems impossible to escape a feeling of helplessness. It is for the Ukrainians and for those able to provide material support for their defense to respond to the moment, and hopefully, to prevail.
Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax posted this heart-felt rendition of the slow movement from the Brahms 3rd Violin Concerto in March, part of Yo-Yo Ma’s Songs of Comfort series. Ax was born in L’viv, Ukraine, into a Polish-Jewish family, and he offers words of encouragement and expresses the hope for peace.
In response to a report in the Washington Post about the missile attack on innocent civilians at a train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, who were trying to flee the conflict zone, Michigan-based composer Gerald Custer created the text for a new piece, “For the Children,” and posted it on Facebook on April 13:
For The Children
This is for the children—
The blinded ones,
The wounded ones,
The ones taken far too soon.
This is for the mothers—
The ones who search,
The ones who weep,
The ones whose hope is gone.
This is for the omas and the opas—
And all those left behind,
For all who grieve and mourn,
Who see old ghosts returning.
And this is for the fighters—
Asleep now in the dust,
Scattered across the roads,
Never to be forgotten.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
Hundreds of people had assembled ahead of an arriving train in Kramatorsk, jostling for space on the platform and in the main hall of the red-brick train station, hoping to flee a looming Russian offensive.
It was then that at least one missile struck the station, tearing through the evacuees, at least 50 of whom were killed. Another 98 were wounded, according to the regional governor. Reporters arrived about 15 minutes after the attack and counted at least 20 dead, including children.
A large piece of a missile had landed about 100 yards from the building entrance. On one side, the words “for the children” were written in Russian. (Washington Post)
Peabody Conservatory graduate students from Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine have organized a benefit concert to raise funds to support humanitarian relief efforts for the people of Ukraine. The performance is to take place at the Peabody Institute’s Cohen-Davison Family Theatre 1 East Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday April 15. Seating is limited, but the concert will be livestreamed.
Two Peabody Institute doctoral candidates, Ukrainian flutist Denis Savelyev and Russian classical saxophonist Nikolai Klotchkov offered a preview of their benefit concert this morning during an interview by Sheilah Kast, host of On The Record, a program on Baltimore’s public radio station WYPR. Links below lead to that interview, to information on the concert, and to a location where donations may be made to support Ukrainian humanitarian relief.
In the 2015 documentary about Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, The Music of Strangers, Silkroad’s Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh recalls the agony of experiencing the war in Syria from afar and reflected on the role of music during a time of armed conflict, saying, “Can a piece of music stop a bullet? Can it feed somebody who is hungry? Of course, it doesn’t. You question the role of art altogether.”
Yet we keep hearing stories about music’s role in lifting the spirits of Ukrainians as they endure the horror of the Russian onslaught. Recently in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, organizers of the annual Kharkiv Music Fest improvised by moving an abbreviated version of the festival into a subway station, where they performed a “concert between explosions” for hundreds of their appreciative fellow citizens. Opening with the Ukrainian National Anthem, they played music by Bach and Dvorak, and arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs. The festival’s art director, Vitali Alekseenok, explained, “Music can unite…. It’s important now for those who stay in Kharkiv to be united.”
Concert between explosions – KharkivMusicFest-2022 in subway shelter (YouTube)
The Washington Post reports that Amelia Anisovych, the seven-year-old whose performance of the Ukrainian language version of “Let It Go” from the Disney movie Frozen from inside a bomb shelter in Kyiv was viewed by millions, is now a refugee in Poland. She recently sang the Ukrainian national anthem before thousands as part of a benefit concert for those who, like Amelia, are fleeing the war. Video of both performances are included in the story:
On March 15, a New York Times headline declared , “Ukraine’s National Anthem Reverberates Around the World,’ and illustrated this with a video montage. The anthem, which begins with the words, “Ukraine’s glory hasn’t perished,” also provides powerful inspiration within the embattled country, where it is heard multiple times each day.
The story explained the origins of the anthem in the 1860s, when it was composed specifically to “revive and celebrate a Ukrainian heritage that was at risk of being lost to a process of Russification.” During the Soviet period the anthem was repressed and supplanted, but it returned after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was sung repeatedly during the Maidan Square protests of 2013 and 2014.
Here, Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma perform the Ukrainian National Anthem
Created in 2004, the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha has become known in the United States through repeated appearances here over the past decade. A recent New York Times story documents their experiences amidst Russia’s current war on Ukraine:
DakhaBrakha, a Band From Kyiv, Saw a War Coming
The story includes links to two performances by DakhaBrakha:
