In a gesture of solidarity, August dates will bring the orchestra to Baltic nations Lithuania and Latvia and the George Enescu Festival in Romania for the first time, as well as return visits to Lucerne, Amsterdam, Warsaw, and London. The orchestra is proud to be again under the patronage of Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, continuing its vital role as a cultural ambassador for Ukraine’s artistic resilience.
At a decisive time in the Ukrainian nation’s continuing defense of its sovereignty and cultural identity, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra will reconvene in August 2025 under the baton of its founder and music director, Keri-Lynn Wilson, for a European tour showcasing Ukrainian artistic excellence.
Building on the extraordinary impact of their three previous summer tours, the 2025 Resilience Tour will present an emotionally resonant program centered around Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, one of the towering masterpieces of music that was written amidst the turmoil of war and personal crisis and has ever since been a cultural touchstone for the journey from darkness into light and triumph over adversity. During the tour, the orchestra will make a live recording of the great symphony for Deutsche Grammophon (DG), following on from the success of their unique Ukrainian-language version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony released by DG last year.
The tour will also feature the premiere of a powerful new work by acclaimed Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets, Suite from The Mothers of Kherson, a moving tribute to the Ukrainian women who made a 3,000-mile journey behind enemy lines to rescue their children forcibly detained by Russian authorities. The suite has been adapted from a new full-scale opera by and librettist George Brant, jointly commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Teatr Wielki–Polish National Opera in Warsaw.
American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen will join the orchestra for performances of Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and Strauss’s poignant “Four Last Songs.” For two special concerts at the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, violinist Alexandra Conunova will perform Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and the orchestra will again present Ukrainian composer Victoria Vita Polevá’s searing “Bucha Lacrimosa,” composed in memory of victims of Russian atrocities.
The tour will begin at the Teatr Wielki–Polish National Opera in Warsaw before performances at the Wroclaw Opera in Poland and a return visit to the Lucerne Festival. The orchestra will then embark on a series of first visits to countries who have shown staunch support for Ukraine and its people in its moment of need: the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society in Vilnius and then the Dzintari Concert Hall in Jūrmala on the shore of the Baltic Sea, before two concerts at the prestigious George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. To conclude the tour, the orchestra will return for the third time to the storied Concertgebouw in Amsterdam before the final concert at London’s Cadogan Hall.
“I invite everyone to join and listen to these musical treasures. True culture, like all eternal values, is not about politics; it is about something greater—about humanity, about preserving the individual, their spirit, rights, and freedom. It is about not turning a blind eye to hardship, not tolerating evil, opposing violence, defending life and the right to it in order to be worthy of being called human—this is the essence conveyed by the classical and contemporary works performed by the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra. And these are the principles upon which our civilization stands. Let us support and preserve it together,” says Olena Zelenska, First Lady of Ukraine.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention