This project is initiated by ZAMUS: The Early Music Center (Cologne, Germany) and the Myroslav Skoryk Lviv National Philharmonic as a result of the first creative collaboration that took place in August this year in Lviv (Ukraine), XIX International Lviv Early Music Festival. The German-Ukrainian project “European Muses Are Not Silent” will last from November, 29 to December, 2.

The cooperation will be held as part of the large-scale, long-term art project named “Ukraine-2022. Muses Are Not Silent” launched at the end of March this year to support Ukrainian musicians who stay in Ukraine and continue their professional activities during full-scale Russian military aggression.

Its purpose is to present the strength and courage of the Ukrainian musical scene as it continues to create, support each other and hold its artistic position proudly in such difficult times during Russia’s mean and brutal war against Ukraine.

Among the Ukrainian artists are instrumentalists Hanna Ivaniushenko (Lviv National Philharmonic), Nazarii Stets (National Soloists Ensemble “Kyiv Camerata”), Dmytro Hub’yak (Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University), vocalist Roman Melish (National House of Music), and composer, manager, the artistic director of the many projects in the Lviv National Philharmonic, Bohdan Sehin. They will be joined by the flautist Norbert Rodenkirchen from Cologne and the Ukrainian Nataliia Neshmonina, the violinist from Essen, Germany.

During a four-day stay in Cologne, Ukrainian musicians and German colleagues will exchange creative professional experiences, produce music together, and hold public meetings and discussions about the focus theme: Ukrainian and European muses cooperate during the most challenging times. European Muses are not silent.

The musicians will work in a studio in Cologne, where a program of several musical sets will be presented at the end of the project on December 2. Ukrainian and European works of the Renaissance and Baroque will be performed. There will also be joint improvisations and performances of two compositions specially created for this project by Bohdan Sehin.

The project’s results will be media reports distributed on Ukrainian and German art Internet platforms, as well as a declaration of continued close cooperation in the performance of the International Lviv Early Music Festival in the next few years.

The project is funded by “The Music fund Ukraine”.

“The Music fund Ukraine” is a project of the Goethe-Institut as part of a comprehensive package of measures for which the Federal Foreign Office provides funds from the supplementary budget 2022 to mitigate the consequences of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and which is additionally supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, in cooperation with Culture Connects e.V.”

Partners:

zamus: Zentrum für Alte Musik Köln | Goethe-Institut | the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung | Culture Connects