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.’”
A Ukrainian jazz club provides joy in Odesa despite the invasion (7-minute listen) https://www.npr.org/2022/04/23/1094470488/jazz-club-wont-shut-down
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:
Lviv artists offer music therapy for kids fleeing the war (April 17, 2022) Local musicians in Lviv, Ukraine are organizing music classes for children fleeing the violence of the of the Russian invasion in their hometowns. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/lviv-artists-offer-music-therapy-for-kids-fleeing-the-war/2022/04/17/7fe7f929-59e9-4494-b5b0-ae8e63d6abea_video.html
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)