Julian Kytasty's "Year of Asia" takes him to New York and Toronto (12/01/02)

Julian Kytasty's "Year of Asia" takes him to New York and Toronto

NEW YORK - The year 2002 has become the "Year of Asia" in the musical life of Julian Kytasty, with extensive collaboration with musicians from Mongolia, India and China. Two of the projects played live for the first time in New York.

The concert "Music from the Far Ends of the Steppe," featuring Mr. Kytasty (bandura, flutes, voice), master Mongolian musician Battuvshin (limbe, morin khoor, throat singing), and Ilya Temkin (husli, hurdy gurdy, guitar), was held in Tibet House in New York on November 23. The concert program was a preview of an upcoming CD - a rich tapestry of sounds, vocal and instrumental, that the three musicians recorded earlier this year - on which Mr. Kytasty also has an opportunity to sing in Mongolian.

On December 1 Mr. Kytasty will participate in a concert being held in Toronto that will assemble most of the North American performers currently working on authentic instruments with the material of the old-time blind singers - the kobzari and lirnyky. The concert will feature Victor Mishalow, kobzarska bandura; Mr. Kytasty, kobzarska bandura; Hryhoriy Herchak, lira; Jurij Fedynskyi, kobzarska bandura, kobza; Mr. Temkin, kobzarska bandura, husli, lira; and Maestro Mishalow's students on the kobzarska bandura. The concert, titled "Shliakhamy Kobzariv" (In the Steps of the Kobzars), will be held in the newly renovated hall at St. Volodymyr Orthodox Cathedral, 400 Bathurst St., at 1 p.m.

On Friday, December 6, Mr. Kytasty's Experimental Bandura Trio (EBT) will perform at Symphony Space in the "Music for Pipa" concert, which is being presented by the World Music Institute. Mr. Kytasty joins Wu Man, a virtuoso performer on the pipa, or Chinese lute, for the second half of her program. Ms. Man, whose credits include performing and recording with Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road project and with the Kronos Quartet, will perform an opening solo set of traditional Chinese material. The second half of the program will feature newly arranged duets drawing on both Chinese and Ukrainian sources. The two musicians will be joined by Mike Andrec and Jurij Fedynskyj of the Experimental Bandura Trio in three rearranged numbers from the EBT Songbook.

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