Mayanna Carter, soprano; Dariyan Dubik, baritone; Nicholas Kluftinger, tenor; Polina Kornyushenko, soprano; Baille Melnyk, soprano; Olesia Shewchuk, soprano; Isabel Stanyer, piano; Anna Tanczak, soprano; Jordan Welbourne, baritone / Steven Philcox, piano; Leanne Regehr, piano. Temerty Theatre, Telus Center for Performance and Learning, Sunday August 18, 2024.
How time flies! Founded in 2004, the Ukrainian Art Song Project is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The goal of the UASP is to bring the vast treasures of Ukrainian art song to music lovers everywhere. Thanks to this initiative, music lovers in Canada and around the world have been able to discover and enjoy the riches of Ukrainian art song, both in live performance and on recordings.
The Ukrainian Art Song Institute, a training center for young artists, is an offshoot of the project. Founded in 2017, every August a group of aspiring young artists meets in Toronto for a week of intensive immersion under the supervision of a respected lecturer (Benjamin Butterfield, Leanne Reece And Melanie TurgeonThis year’s public concert is the sixth and showcases the talent of eight singers and a pianist.
This year’s singers included five sopranos, one tenor and two baritones. All of them are at the beginning of their singing careers or are about to begin. All have youthful and fresh voices, at various stages of development, all have a lot of potential and are eager to show the audience their vocal talent. I heard that most of them had little or no experience singing in Ukrainian, so it was remarkable that they could do it so well after a relatively short intensive summer course.
The packed audience at the Temerty Theater was treated to a program of 21 songs by Lopatynsky, Stepovy, Turkewich, Lysenko, Klebanov, Nyzhankivsky, Volynsky, Barvinsky and Stetsenko. The concert ended with a tribute to the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.
The Temerty Theatre is essentially a rehearsal studio, ideal for an intimate “theatre in the round” experience with the piano at the centre. The performers were placed in different parts of the large studio, with some sitting in the audience.
The 21 songs range musically from the high romanticism of Lysenko and Stetsenko to the edgier and edgier modernist style of Stefania Turkewich. The songs were solos and duets, the last of which was sung by the ensemble in front of the audience. The singers performed their pieces with youthful tone and heartfelt expression. I confess to having a soft spot for the more melodic pieces such as “The Princess” and “A Boat Drifts On” by Lysenko and “And So I Prayed” by Nyzhankivsky. But I can honestly say that I enjoyed every song – Bravi tutti!
The last song on the programme was Stetsenko’s “Testament”, based on a poem by the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. At this point the entire audience stood up. I admit that I did not know the meaning of this song, so I thank Daria Olynyk, who subsequently sent me the information that I am presenting below:
“The Testament expresses pragmatic and idealistic thoughts, the meaning of which acquired ideological significance as the poem’s popularity grew. It was sung as a national anthem and intoned as a requiem. It was hailed as a proclamation of emancipation as well as a declaration of independence.” (From Shevchenko’s Testament by John Panchuk)
After the official program, the audience joined the artists in singing a Ukrainian song: “Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,” a prayer by Mykola Lysenko, the same song that ended the concert last year. We were given sheet music with phonetically written lyrics in English so that everyone could sing along.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been going on for three years now and the Ukrainian people have endured untold suffering. Let us hope that the conflict will end soon.
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Joseph So is Professor Emeritus at Trent University and Co-Editor of Opera Canada. He is also a long-time contributor to La Scena Musicale and Opera (London, UK). His interests in music journalism focus on voice, opera, and symphonic and piano repertoires. He is a regular panelist on the Big COC Podcast. He is co-editor of the book Opera in a Multicultural World: Coloniality, Culture, Performance, published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group).
