Updated info on Talents of Ukraine tour

The itinerary and other details of the Honored Academic Song and Dance Company of Ukraine "Donbas" 2011 Canadian tour are now available at the Boen Performing Arts website.

You can find an overview of the group and a video in

Talents of Ukraine – 2011 Canadian Tour

Boen Performing Arts is bringing another fabulous Ukrainian act to Canada this fall.

Just got word of it and waiting to get details from Ken Kachmar of Boen Arts ... this story is so new it it wasn't even posted on their website the last time I checked!

Here's what is known so far:

The show tour, dedicated to the 120th anniversary of Ukrainians in Canada, will feature The Honored Academic Song and Dance Company of Ukraine "Donbas."

The group began its creative activity in 1937 in the city of Donetsk, Ukraine and since then has enchanted audiences with the bright spectacle of the song and dance of their native land.

Many well known choreographers  have worked in this Dance Company, including Pavlo Virsky, Oleksiy Homon, and Valentyn Mykhailow.

Donbas has performed in Poland, Romania, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Portugal and other European venues. During the last decade, under the direction of Valentyn Kichik and artistic direction of Oleksander Prokopenko, they performed in the USA, China, Syria and three times in Brazil.

I couldn't find a website for them but did come across this delightful YouTube video of a group by that name. If it's the same group then Canadian audiences are in for a real treat!



Featured soloists are violinist Innesa Tymochko and singers Svitlana Sasu and Yevhen Vaskin.

Innesa Tymochko has performed at concerts, banquets, festivals, on television, radio, and in theaters throughout Europe, including Belgium, Spain, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Russia and Chernohirja. In 2005 she was a featured performer at the internationally acclaimed Eurovision Awards, Europe's answer to America's Grammy Awards, held in Kyiv.

Yevhen Vaskin has a charming tenor voice and a varied repertoire ranging from folk songs to contemporary arrangements of original compositions. He has performed extensively on the international scene and has won several all-Ukrainian vocal competitions.

Svitlana Sasu is a Ukrainian actress and singer, originally from Moldova, who currently lives and works in Kyiv. She has won many awards, including the International vocal competition "Baltic Trembita" in Tallin, Estonia (2005), the International competition "Perlyna" (Pearl) in Tyraspil, Moldova (2007), an international competition of Ukrainian songs "Hilka Kalyny" (Rasberry branch) in Rome, Italy (2010, and in 2011, she was the winner of the International singing competition of Ukrainian Romance in Lviv, Ukraine, honouring the beloved Ukrainian American singer, the late Kvitka Cisyk.

So far this is where The Talents of Ukraine 2011 Canadian Tour is booked to perform:

Vancouver on Tuesday, October 11 at The Centre For Performing Arts, 777 Homer St. (Tickets)

Vernon on Wednesday, October 12 at the Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre (Tickets)
 
Edmonton on  Friday, October 14 at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, 11455 — 87 Avenue (Tickets)

More details as I get them. Stay tuned!

Canadians take part in diaspora conference in Chernihiv

Chernihiv University in Ukraine hosted a diaspora conference in May 2009, and Ukrainian Canadians participated actively, according to the Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies.

From May 15-17, 2009 The Taras Shevchenko State Pedagogical University in Chernihiv Ukraine hosted a Diaspora Conference entitled “”Ukraine in the World: Ukraine is There Where Ukrainians Live.”

The conference was organized by Prof. Stanislaw Ponomarovskiy, head of the university’s Foundation of Public Innovations: Ukraine-Diaspora. The conference attracted some 100 delegates from Ukraine and the diaspora countries, who presented papers. Another 87 papers were submitted by scholars who could not attend.

Conference sub themes were:

• the analysis and the contemporary situation of diaspora countries and their major institutions and leaders;
• art, folklore and the church in the diaspora;
• language and literature of the diaspora;
• education and schooling in the diaspora;
• holodomor and the diaspora; and
• research projects on the diaspora of young scholars.

The opening preliminary session included papers by nine scholars on various themes of the diaspora. Among the authors were profs

• Oleh Wolowyna of Chapel Hill, USA (on the fourth wave of Ukrainian settlement in USA);
• Roman Yereniuk of the Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies, University of Manitoba in Winnipeg (on the religious press in Canada and its reporting on the Holodomor);
• Daryna Teteryna-Blokhin of Munich, Germany (on the political and economic status of Ukraine on the eve of the holodomor); and
• Oleksander Kapitonenko of Sumy, Ukraine (on the Australian period in the life of artist David Buruliuk.

The sectional thematic papers were well received. Many were on the themes on the diaspora of Canada and USA. Many scholars were younger, aged 23-35, and showed excellent research talents in their papers. All the papers will be published and/or formatted on CDs in the late summer and will be available for purchase.

This is the sixth such diaspora conference in the last five years, and shows that the area of diaspora studies has a significant following among scholars in the west as well as in Ukraine.

For more information on this and other Ukrainian Canadian news events contact Professor Roman Yereniuk, Acting Director of the Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies at the University of Manitoba by phone at 204-474-8907 or email .

Two of Canada's senior cabinet ministers congratulate Ukraine on 20 years of independence

The Honourable Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, and the Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of International Cooperation, issued the following statement recognizing today’s celebration of Ukraine Independence Day:

Spectacular violinist coming to Canadian stages starting in Vancouver

One of the performers traveling across Canada this month with The Talents of Ukraine 2011 show tour is contemporary violinist Innesa Tymochko. Now a New Yorker, Innesa originally hails from Lviv, Ukraine where she studied music and launched a musical career that had her performing on stages throughout Europe.

In a recent interview on Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio, she revealed that she was a child prodigy at age 6. While she studied classical violin, she was also enthralled by the beauty and power of traditional Ukrainian folk music. In fact she was so drawn to it that she developed her own "fusion" style of contemporary Ukrainian folk music.

With charming candour, she admits to an abiding love of Ukrainian folk music, the stage, and pleasing audiences with her music. This woman's joy of performing shines through the minute she first pulls the bow across the strings. She'll then take you on a musical journey that is guaranteed to pluck the heartstrings of any Ukrainian folk music lover.

This will be Innesa's first trip to Canada and she is very excited to be part of this tour. It starts out in Vancouver on Tuesday, October 11 at the Vancouver Center for the Performing Arts. After that it's on to Vernon for a Wednesday evening performance, then to other points east, wrapping up in Montréal on October 25.

If you haven't bought your tickets yet, don't wait a minute longer! This will be a show you don't want to miss.

Along with Innesa, you'll be delighted with the performances of two outstanding singers from Ukraine as well as the spectacular Donbas Song and Dance Company of Ukraine. Tickets for the performances in Western Canada can be purchased from Ticketmaster, and elsewhere from the venues where the show is being held. Details at the Boen Arts website and in earlier posts (here and here). 

Innesa has her own website which is www.innesa.com and you can read more about her and order her CDs there.

Meanwhile, I found a few YouTube videos of Innesa performing. They’ll give you an idea of her onstage charisma. But there’s nothing like the real thing! So I hope you'll join me in seeing her perform live on stage in Vancouver... or at a venue close to you.

This is Vivaldi's Storm, which opened the show we chatted on:



This is her performing Podolianka at her own wedding.



...and someone else's wedding (where she puts me in mind of the late Al Czerny):



For those earlybirds amongst us, here she is doing a medley of Ukrainian Christmas tunes:



And one more medley of Ukrainian folk tunes:

See you at the show!

Audio archives at Nash Holos updated

Here's what's on the Sept. 25 podcast of Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio:

• Ukrainian

a tale of two anthems

An interesting article called Anthem Passions in the Ukrainian Observer about the Ukrainian and Russian national anthems.

'Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished' was written as a poem in 1862 by Pavlo Chubynsky, a nineteen-year-old student... One year later, Mykhailo Verbytsky composed a tune to accompany this daring poem. Back then, a repressive campaign against Ukrainian culture was in full swing, but a miracle happened and Ukraine's intelligentsia and peasantry recognized this song as an unofficial national anthem.

Pavlo Chubynsky was victimized, and persecuted for the rest of his life. Mykhailo Verbytsky escaped this destiny, for he was living away from Russia. Vladimir Putin created the Russian state anthem, 'Russia is Our Great Country,' in 2001 by issuing a presidential decree to make the 1943 Soviet anthem new Russia's musical symbol, but he ordered that the lyrics be changed. The text was written by the famous Soviet poet Sergey Mikhalkov...The music was composed by Major General and Head of the Soviet Army Ensemble Aleksandr Aleksandrov...'

The article goes on to detail the misery Chubynsky suffered at the hands of the Russians, his talents and contributions to society, and his untimely death.

But his poem captured a nation and formed its identity:

It was the October of 1915. At the WWI Russian-Austrian front spontaneous fraternization was getting more common. Stepan Murinets, a Ukrainian officer of the Austrian army, saw some soldiers of his company hug their Russian counterparts. Suddenly, the Ukrainian anthem was performed in the crowd. The officer remembered that his country's great division made Ukrainians always sing anthems of other countries - Austria, Germany, Poland, Romania, or Russia. This was the first time he heard the Ukrainian anthem sound over the trenches. The Ukrainians wearing Russian greatcoats were singing it in unison, although the song was banned in Russia. On August 30, 1919, Stepan Murinets, a colonel of the Ukrainian army, was leading his regiment of Sich marksmen to Kyiv. Commander-in-Chief Symon Petlyura inspected the parade that day. The orchestra performed the anthem loudly and fearlessly in Kyiv's Sophia Square. A massive Bolshevik assault forced the ataman of the Ukrainian People's Republic and his troops to emigrate. Stepan was one of them and later wrote memoirs...

The writer of the article, unfortunately, doesn't seem to value the tenacity and daring of the Ukrainian anthem, despite what he writes. Odd. Or, perhaps just an illustration of the demoralizing effect of centuries foreign occupation.