The Washington Group Cultural Fund launches 2004-2005 season (11/21/04)

The Washington Group Cultural Fund launches 2004-2005 season

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - The Washington Group Cultural Fund launched its 2004-2005 Music Series with two concerts this fall, the first featuring the Forte String Quartet and the second bass-baritone Taras Kulish - and with a new director at the helm.

Many series veterans attending the opening concert October on 17 at the Lyceum in Old Town Alexandria, Va., were surprised to see a new person welcoming them to the series. It was Svitlana Fedko Shiells, who two weeks earlier became the TWG Cultural Fund's new director after Laryssa Courtney, who has headed the fund since its founding 10 years ago, stepped down.

The Forte String Quartet is a young, New York-based Bulgarian-Ukrainian ensemble founded in 1990 by violinists Mikhail Kuchuk and Oleksandr Abayev, violist Roumi Petrova and cellist Kalin Ivanov. Since then it has performed extensively in Europe (England, France, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Greece) and in the United States.

The ensemble treated the Washington-area audience to a program that ranged from the String Quartet No. 4 in C Minor by Ludwig van Beethoven to the "Rodopa Suite" for String Quartet by its own violist-composer, Ms. Petrova. In the mix as well was Myroslav Skoryk's popular "Melodiya" and Partita No. 6 for String Quartet and the "Summer" movement from Astor Piazzolla's "Four Seasons of Buenos Aires."

The second concert on November 14 introduced Washington to the Ukrainian Canadian bass baritone, Taras Kulish, who is quickly making a name for himself in the operatic world, with performances in all of the major opera houses in Canada, a tour of Europe and at U.S. summer music festivals, including Aspen and Tanglewood.

The first half of the program featured three songs each by Franz Schubert ("An die Musik," "Der Doppelgänger" and "Ständchen") and Gabriel Fauré ("Prison," "Chanson d'Amour" and "Les Berceaux") as well as "Old Man River" from Jerome Kern's "Showboat."

Using the intermission for a costume change, Mr. Kulish and his accompanist, Emily Hamper, returned to the stage in embroidered Ukrainian costumes for the second half of the program devoted exclusively to Ukrainian music. It began with two dramatic arias from Mykola Lysenko's "Taras Bulba" ("Hei, Lita Orel" and "Shcho u Sviti Ye Sviatishe?"), continued with the comic aria by the drunk Karas ("Oi, Shchos Duzhe Zahuliavsia") from Semen Hulak-Artemovsky's "Zaporozhets za Dunaiem," before turning to the subject of love and longing in "Oi, Ty Divchyno" by Anatol Kos-Anatolsky and "Yak Davno" by Hryhory Kytasty.

To the special delight of the middle-aged and older Ukrainian Americans in the audience, he closed the concert with a handful of songs they, no doubt, first danced to 40-50 years ago and remember until this day: "Bulo ne tuzhyty," "Sertse" and similar tangos, waltzes and foxtrots by the Ukrainian Canadian composer Bohdan Wesolowsky. Oleksandr Bilash's "Mamyni Ruky" was the encore.

The music series will continue on March 14 with pianist Juliana Osinchuk, the former New Yorker musician who now lives in Alaska. The Cerberus Piano Trio, with pianist Mykola Suk, will close the series on May 22.

The Cultural Fund's new director, Dr. Shiells, brings to her position years of experience in the arts. She has a Ph.D. in art history and, since coming to the United States in 1999, she has taught the subject at the University of Maryland at College Park and the American University in Washington. She has organized numerous art exhibitions in Ukraine and in the United States.

Ms. Courtney, her predecessor, has organized cultural events for The Washington Group, an organization of Ukrainian American professionals, since the group was founded 20 years ago. In 1994 she formalized that effort by establishing the TWG Cultural Fund. As she noted in the recently published TWG 20th anniversary booklet, the fund's mission is "to foster and promote Ukrainian culture in the Washington Metropolitan area, thereby enriching the community in the areas of music, art, dance, theater, film and literature."

Since then, the Cultural Fund has put on more than 70 concerts, recitals, exhibits and lectures at various capital area venues, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Department of State, universities, museums, embassies, churches and synagogues, galleries and bookstores. It has also sponsored various benefit concerts and other events for such causes as helping the victims of the Chornobyl disaster, raising breast cancer awareness and treatment in Ukraine, and funding instrument acquisition and repair in Ukrainian music schools.

From the outset, the Cultural Fund has worked in close cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine. The wives of ambassadors of Ukraine have served as honorary chairpersons of the fund, the embassy's cultural attachés have been members of the Cultural Fund Committee, and many events have taken place at the Embassy.

Among the scores of ensembles and soloists the TWG Cultural Fund helped introduce to the Washington area were: the Kyiv Camerata, Kyiv Chamber Choir, Les Kurbas Theater of Lviv, Leontovych String Quartet, soprano Oksana Krovytska, bass Stefan Szkafarowsky, violinist Oleh Krysa and pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky.

The Cultural Fund's Music Series is funded by sponsors who donate $100 ($150 for couples), from donations on admission to the events as well as other tax-deductible donations to its general fund.

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