annual report

Canadian Ukrainian Opera AssociationToronto, Ukrainian Art Song ProjectThe Galicians$10,000St Sophie Ukrainian OrthodoxCathedralMontreal, To Serve God—To Serve PeopleMetropolitan Ilarion CD Recording$500Pro Coro SocietyEdmonton, The Heart of Kyiv CD Recording$3,350Saint Anne’s UkrainianCatholic ChurchWinnipeg, Easter Matins & LiturgyCD Recording$500Sich BandWinnipeg, Back to the Sich CD Recording$500recordingsThe generous support of the ShevchenkoFoundation helped the Ukrainian ArtSong Project (UASP) take significant stepsin 2011 toward its goal of leaving a majorlegacy to the world of music by collecting,documenting and recording some 1100art songs by Ukrainian composers. Followingup on its 2010 launch of professionallyrecorded CD packages of 221 art songs ofMykola Lysenko, Yakiv Stepovyi and KyryloStetsenko, the UASP embarked upon thedocumentation of the 205 art songs ofUkraine’s Galician composers. During thesummer of 2011, international opera starPavlo Hunka, founder of the UASP, joinedwith producer Roman Hurko and a cast ofCanadian opera stars and pianists at GlennGould Studio in Toronto to record 80 ofthe Galician treasures by Denys Sichynsky,Vasyl Barvinsky, Stanyslav Liudkevych andStefania Turkewich. The works of Turkewich,Ukraine’s first female composer, werelargely unknown until now, and theyastounded the Canadian musicianswith their imaginative, innovative andbeautifully melodic ideas. The UASPSibelius team—a group of students ofcomposition attending at the RoyalAcademy of Music, the Royal Collegeof Music and the Guildhall of Music inLondon set about transcribing Turkewich’ssongs into the Sibelius computer musicprogramme which transposes them into anykey in which an artist wishes to sing. Theprogramme also prepares each song to bepublished on the UASP web site(www.uasp.ca), where a library ofUkrainian art songs is in the making,to be accessed for study and performance,free of charge, by musicians and musiclovers throughout the world. And inrecognition of the importance of theUkrainian art song, Pavlo Hunka wasinvited to perform Lysenko’s song cycle,A Poet’s Love, at the Passau Classical MusicFestival on July 11, 2012 in Germany, wherethe art song was born. The volunteers ofthe UASP extend their sincere gratitudeto the Shevchenko Foundation and itsvisionary donors.Spivohrai Vocal EnsembleSaskatoon, Ukrainian Children`s SongsCD Recording$1,000Tyt I Tam Ukrainian BandSaskatoon, Double CD Project$1,000Vesnivka ChoirToronto, Best of Veselowskyj CD Recording$1,500Vocal QuartetMontreal, Christmas CD Recording$1,000Zhyto BandCalgary, Zhyto CD Recording$750On behalf of the Spivohrai UkrainianChildren’s Vocal Ensemble, I would like toexpress our very sincere appreciation to theShevchenko Foundation for awarding usthe grant of $1000 to produce our first CDПерші Kроки—First Steps.Spivohrai was established in 2010 with theaim of providing boys and girls, ages 5–15,with an opportunity to maintain, developand share their Ukrainian cultural identitythrough the medium of song. The groupperforms regularly at many communityfunctions throughout the year, includingVesna Festival, Ukrainian Day in the Parkand Folk Fest, just to mention a few.Last year, thanks in large measure tosupport from the Taras ShevchenkoFoundation, Spivohari recorded a CD ofthirteen Ukrainian folk and ‘obriadovi’songs, as well as a few ‘rizdvizni koliadky’.The project was a wonderful opportunityfor our young singers to develop a productthat both showcases their heritage andtalents and enables these to be sharedin the broader community.We hope this CD will serve to inspire notonly other young singers and also allmembers of our community.Respectfully,Zhyto would like to formally thankthe Shevchenko Foundation for theirfinancial support of our upcoming album.Preservation of the Ukrainian Canadianculture, specifically music, is importantto the members of Zhyto and it is becauseof generous support that we are able togo ahead with such projects. It is not easyfor a volunteer group to find the time andresources to undertake a project such as analbum. With the Shevchenko Foundation’sgrant programs, we will be able to realizeour dream of putting out an album, for ourown benefit but more importantly for thebenefit of the Ukrainian Canadian musicalculture as a whole.14 |Andreya Karnaukh, Artistic DirectorSpivohrai Ukrainian Children’sVocal EnsembleToma Lebedovich| 15