Under the patronage of Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra will bring together leading musicians based in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and elsewhere in Ukraine alongside Ukrainian musicians forced into exile by the war and Ukrainian members of European orchestras.
“The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra’s remarkable concert tours have seen it become not only the musical voice of Ukraine”, says First Lady Zelenska, “but a powerful cultural voice for everyone who cares about liberty in the face of aggression. I invite you to their 2024 Beethoven Ninth Freedom Tour, which, through the timeless medium of great art, will again assert that the message of hope and the values of humanity will never be vanquished.”
The orchestra was formed in 2022 by Keri-Lynn Wilson, in coordination with the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and the Polish National Opera in Warsaw. It was a direct response to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and a bold initiative to defend Ukraine’s cultural legacy as the country fights for its freedom in the face of violence and aggression. “On the day Putin invaded I was angry and appalled and immediately determined to do something to oppose this barbarism,” says Wilson. “Not just because I am of Ukrainian Canadian heritage, or because I have cousins who live in the country, some of whom have fought on the front line in Donbas, but because this assault on a nation and its culture demanded a response in kind. I could not take up arms, but I could take up my baton as my weapon.”
The orchestra will assemble in Warsaw for rehearsals under the auspices of the Polish National Opera. The tour will begin at the storied musical church of Saint-Eustache in Paris in the run up to the 2024 Paris Olympics. Concerts will follow at the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
There will also be a special concert in a shipyard in Gdansk Bay, Poland, the birthplace of the Solidarity movement and a venue symbolic of the struggle for freedom and self-determination in the face of despotism. The concert in the dramatic setting of the Gydnia shipyard will be held under the honorary patronage of former President of Poland, founder of Solidarity and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Wałęsa, who has been a staunch champion of the Ukrainian people in their moment of need.
The soloists for the tour will be Ukrainian singers Olga Bezsmertna (soprano), Nataliia Kukhar (mezzo- soprano), Valentyn Dytiuk (tenor), and Andrii Kymach (bass-baritone). The orchestra will be joined by local choirs with links to the wider Ukrainian community, including at St Paul’s Cathedral in London with the Royal Opera House’s Songs for Ukraine Chorus, which is made up of Ukrainian refugees and members of the Ukrainian London diaspora affected by the war, as well as members of the Royal Opera Chorus.
Each concert will open with a new work by the Ukrainian composer Victoria Vita Polevá entitled Bucha Lacrimosa. The piece is the latest in a series of responses to the invasion composed by Polevá. It was composed in memory of the innocent victims massacred at the hands of Russian invaders in the Ukrainian town of Bucha in 2022.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention