The annual Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival (UCMF) kicks off March 28, with the theme “Crossing Borders.” Taking place in New York City, the festival runs from March 28th to the 30th: promoting Ukrainian culture abroad, as the war carries on in its native land.
This year's event offers the concert “Virko at 85,” celebrating the birthday and music of Ukrainian-American composer and former HURI Petro Jacyk Distinguished Research Fellow Virko Baley.
Co-organized by the Ukrainian Institute in Kyiv, the festival was started in 2020 by musicologist Leah Batstone. Batstone says her inspiration to create the UCMF came through researching Ukrainian music programming in the wake of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. “It was a moment of freedom,” she said, in regard to Euromaidan’s impact. “A moment of breaking away from a still very post-Soviet legacy.”
For the uninitiated: contemporary music refers to current day classical music. Batstone describes it as “music for the concert hall,” typically written by living composers. She says that since the revolution, Ukraine has undergone an explosion of concerts, festivals, and projects in this genre. To examine this phenomenon, she spent the summer of 2019 documenting this innovative music scene.
Unsurprisingly, ensembles such as the National Symphony of Ukraine moved away from Russian music, incorporating more Ukrainian composers. Beyond that simple shift, Batstone emphasized the proliferation of artistic opportunities in the country. Venues showed support for shows; people took the initiative to start festivals.
The musicologist lauded “the intensity, the excitement… and at least from the outside, the apparent ease with which this kind of young generation of my peers in Ukraine were doing really cool new things with music.” Pointing out that this younger cohort had “come of age” during Maidan, she says they took “this opportunity to recreate, reframe Ukrainian culture in a really cool, modern way.”
The music scene in Ukraine does not merely re-establish Ukrainian identity. It explores what Ukrainian identity is, and what it could become. There is an openness to experimentation: a willingness to combine tradition and modernity. Batstone described it as an “exciting culture,” wherein “somebody had taken the restraints off” since the revolution.
Initially, the UCMF was conceived to bring Ukraine’s dynamic contemporary music to NYC. However, in 2022, three weeks before the festival, the invasion began. For Batstone, this ramped up the need to sustain the festival, “to defy war, and violence, against culture.” She added that “when you connect to a culture, it makes it harder to see it being destroyed.”
This year’s focus, “Crossing Borders,” is a nod to those who have fled from war. It’s also a celebration of Ukrainian composers who travel under other circumstances, such as working in international ensembles. What’s more, this title touches on a broad American experience. With a history characterized by migration, Batstone says that border crossing is an “essential part” of the American identity. Though the festival’s theme is salient to the Ukrainian experience, in Batstone’s words, “this is everybody’s story.”
Consider Virko Baley, the composer and Jacyk Research Fellow with a dedicated festival concert. Though his family came to America as refugees, he grew to have a successful career as a composer. During his HURI fellowship, he produced his magnum opus opera: “Holodomor (Red Earth. Hunger.).” Considering himself a citizen of the world, he has worked in both the States and Ukraine. He is a classic immigrant success story: difficult, or impossible, for many to achieve. But, a story to which American audiences are especially attuned.
Batstone says she views the festival’s music “as an artifact, of border crossing, and both past and present migration.” Accordingly, Batstone views the UCMF as an attempt to create a dialogue between nations and cultures. Hers is a style of scholarship in which one evaluates the social significance of music: How it reflects a political situation. How it is shaped by its society. How music, itself, shapes that society in return.
Batstone has relied on publications from HURI, such as the Harvard Ukrainian Studies Journal’s Ukrainian Modernism Issue, in her musical research. She also credits historians such as HURI’s Serhii Plokhy for producing general historical knowledge. This helps people in theater and music understand the large scale events which affected their artistic mediums.
For those who cannot attend the festival in person, there is a North American and European stream available online, for a minimum donation of $5. For people in the Boston area, an annual Ukrainian Festival also takes place in Boston in the summertime. There may be other concerts throughout the year: this last February, the Kyiv-based Nation Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine performed in Worcester. Batstone encourages people to attend such events, to advocate for Ukrainian music. After all, the industry depends on demand to secure funding.
To those seeking further information, a useful resource is the website Ukrainian Live. Connected with the Ukrainian organ hall in Lviv, this site catalogs numerous Ukrainian composers. It covers time periods, such as the Baroque era, and the present day. In addition to discovering composers, users can listen to music through a mobile app, or request sheet music.
Another resource is the site Musicology Now, created by the American Musicological Society. This site contains shorter Op Ed style English language pieces about Ukrainian music, covering topics such as the response to war.
Several more resources can be found on the UCMF site, including a composer database, scores, and articles. The UCMF founder has been working with the scholarly community to introduce English speakers to Ukrainian music. She’s currently producing a book about Ukrainian musical modernism, through a fellowship based in Vienna.