Author Archives: Anna

Travel back in time

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In the last days of September, Maria and I visited two villages in the Bobrovyts’kyi district of Chernihivs’ka region to collect songs, stories and memories. A bus ride shaky enough to break teeth or induce labour took us to Kozats’ke (Козацьке), where a welcoming party of babushka-clad old ladies was awaiting us by the village club*. After a series of kisses and a debate about whether it was still sinful to sing softly on a fasting day**, the old ladies hopped on their bikes and rode off to the hut that would serve as our recording studio for the day.

The eight ladies who gathered in the humble, but beautifully decorated home of our host, Maria Andrijivna Vakulenko, form the well-known ensemble Berehynja. They tour all over Ukraine on a little bus that belongs to the former village kolhoz (communal farm). We ate delicious steamed pirogues and spent several hours listening to their stories and songs. Afterwards, Maria Andrijivna showed us some very old articles of traditional garb and gave us a tour of her little farm.

Village Kozats’ke, Ensemble Berehynja: “Kalyna malyna” (“Калина малина”)



Village Kozats’ke, Ensemble Berehynja: “Pryjizhaje mij mylen’kyj z polja” (“Приїзжає мій миленький з поля”)



From left to right: Hanna Oleksandrivna Chubovs’ka (1937), Oleksandra Stepanivna Hereles'(1938), Ljubov Mykolajivna Soroka (1943), Kateryna Ivanivna Burzak (1938), Maria Andrijivna Vakulenko (1945), Ljubov Petrovna Mojsejenko (1942), Natalka Hrehorivna Samson (1936) and Hanna Mykolajivna Chubovs’ka (1937)

The next morning we arose bright and early to catch a little bus to the neighbouring village, Vepryk (Веприк, which translates to “little pig”). There was no welcoming committee here. Iryna, our guide, had a list of names obtained earlier from the village head and we went door-to-door looking for the old ladies known to sing. Once we got two of them in one place, I was given an ancient bike and sent to look for the third.

Soon enough we were gathered in the summer kitchen of Nina Myhajlovna Borovik, who was preparing potatoes and constantly shooing the countless cats living in her yard. These three women are not part of an ensemble like Berehynja and rarely sing together anymore, but managed to remember quite a few beautiful songs. After several hours of singing, gossiping and eating, one of the women, Hanna Ivanovna Jermenok, took us to her home and showed us around her farm, even demonstrating how she reaps grass with an old scythe. She happily showed off old family photos, embroidered shirts and aprons, and hand-woven cloths.

Village Vepryk: “Oj u poli zhyto” (“Ой у полі жито”)

These women can usually sing all the voices in any given song, deciding almost instinctively who will take which line. Here, the top voice switches partway because the first woman was having trouble reaching so high.

Village Vepryk: “Nagljadajsja moja maty” (“Наглядайся моя мати”)



The whole experience was like traveling back in time. Life in these villages couldn’t have been much different 100 years ago, except that maybe people were younger, fresher. Rural communities are dying in Ukraine and this traditional folk culture is disappearing quickly.

For a writer’s perspective on this little expedition, check out Maria Reva’s “Expedition log: songs and sins.”

From left to right: Nina Myhajlovna Borovyk (1952), Hanna Tryhonivna Hajduk (19??), Hanna Ivanovna Jermenok (1949)

* Clubs were set up in villages during Soviet times to promote communist culture and ideals. This is where people would gather to sing and dance.
** One officially can’t sing during fasts, but they made an exception for us.

Art Music in Kiev

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Upon arriving in Kiev, Maria and I discovered to our great joy that one can see an opera here for as little as $1.25 or as much as $25. Without losing any time, we booked superb tickets to see several Ukrainian works, which are very hard to find in Canada.

The highlight of our three-day cultural weekend was the ballet Night before Christmas (Ніч перед різдвом, 1990) by Yevhen Stankovych (or Stankovich), which took place at the Kiev Opera House. The music explored a lot of folk material and was a little Stravinskyesque at times. The whole first scene was a very clever layering of what is known as the “Carol of the bells”. It even makes an appearance in the tom-toms. The sets and costumes were gorgeous, and so was the hall itself. It’s obvious that this is the place you are meant to bring your foreign business partners – everything is beautifully restored and the programs have English translation. The following night we saw a Ukrainian classic, the opera Natalka Poltavka (1889) by Mykola Lysenko. The music was nothing special and was sadly overshadowed by the glamourous costumes and sets.

I was particularly looking forward to Monday night, though it ended up being a rather frustrating event in terms of local bureaucracy. But more on that some other time. The event was a state-funded celebration of Stankovych’s 70th birthday, with a concert presentation of his folk opera When the fern blooms (Коли цвіте папороть, 1979) at the Ukrainian National Philharmonic. I read about this work some months ago and had little hope of every finding it. And lo and behold! It turns out that it was being performed in Kiev, now, for free! I call it fate.

The event was full of speeches by various government and cultural officials and the gifting of countless grotesquely large bouquets. I hope the composer had a bucket or two in front of him. There was even a letter from President Yanukovych, the reading of which was greeted by dissatisfied murmurs and quiet booing. The music in this so-called folk “opera” was extremely loud and full-bodied, with a whole lot of choir. It sounded more like an oratorio. I will have to do some thorough listening to the CD, which I quite literally found in the hall, before I decide what I really think of it.

For those of you itching to check out some contemporary Ukrainian piano music, find something by Alexander Shchetynsky (or Shchetinsky). Maria and I got to see a full concert of his solo piano works performed at the Archive Museum on the grounds of the St. Sophia Cathedral in central Kiev. Most of the pieces were serial, each with a very unique soundworld. My favorite were the Four Preludes (1977-78). They had lots of character. Glorify the name of the Lord (Хваліте імя Господнє,1987) was radically different from the other works. It was largely made up of long, simple, chant-like melodies, which very slowly built up into a dense polyphonic texture over the course of 25 minutes. The flowing lines were frequently interrupted by a repeating bell-like chord. The work was very meditative.

Tomorrow we are off to our first village with a large bag of candy, a bunch of chocolate bars and several bottles of sweet wine (the old ladies have a sweet tooth). Check back for updates, and in the meantime check out Maria’s photo tour featuring the Kiev suburbs.

Flatten your throat and sing

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“Flatten your throat and send a nasty sound into your teeth.”

That’s roughly what we were trying to do in the student folk ensemble led by the well-known Ukrainian ethnomusicologist Yevhen Yefremov.

This week I was very lucky to sit in on a lecture on the modal organization of Ukrainian folksong given by professor Yefremov at the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music. Professor Yefremov doesn’t just collect and analyze folksongs. He can also sing them complete with all the ornamentation, altered tunings, and the authentic village timbre. His lecture was full of musical examples, which he performed himself, from memory and without any lesson plans. Later in the day I got to participate in his student ensemble where we tried to decipher and imitate several folksongs from Ukrainian villages found on Russian territory. Who knows, maybe we’ll make a folk singer out of me yet.

Last night, Maria and I got our first real taste of live folksong performance, which took place not in a village, but on the 22nd floor of a very futuristic-looking Soviet apartment block in the Troeshchina suburb.* Iryna Danylejko, the lovely ethnomusicologist who is helping us with our expeditions, invited us over to her “penthouse”** apartment to celebrate her daughter’s fourth birthday. The apartment is filled with curious objects that Iryna and her husband Danylo brought back from various expeditions: hanging baskets, ornate icons, a giant wooden trunk and a small stone mill, to name a few.

Once we got through a couple of bottles of wine and a small decanter of rosehip-infused horilka (Ukrainian vodka), the four singers treated us to three folksongs. I spent most of today walking around my uncle’s empty apartment, tears streaming from my eyes from intense sadness and concentration, trying to sing one of the mournful songs through my partially squeezed throat. I should have really been writing the somewhat belated piano quartet for Ensemble Sonore instead. But folksong is my raison d’être in Ukraine, right? Sonore can wait, I hope.

Iryna sings in a folk ensemble Mykhajlove Chudo (Mихайлове Чудо). You can see and hear them here and here, and with the rock band N.Sh.N (Н.Ш.Н.) here.

* Yes, suburbs in Ukraine are made up of 22-story apartment buildings with not one single-family unit in sight.

** As Iryna’s husband, Danylo, called their humble, but cosy abode from which you can see most of Kiev.

Ukraine: first days

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Achievements to date: learning how to use a cell phone with Russian menus and making a whole THREE phone calls to strangers (1 in Russian, 2 in Ukrainian).

My sister and I left Canada last Friday. Two days and several long layovers later, we have finally arrived in Kiev. I was disappointed to discover that the Chopin Airport in Warsaw did NOT have pianos OR Chopin impersonators playing mazurkas at every gate, as I hoped, but there was quite a bit of Chopin-related merchandize in the duty-free shops.

I was born in Ukraine, but I’ve been living in Canada long enough that my visits to the Motherland are always a bit of a culture shock. There is an insane contrast between the restored, shiny and super expensive centre with its luxury cars and fashionable, stilettoed women, and the slummy suburbs made up of endless blocks of Soviet-era concrete apartments*. The transit system also gets increasingly questionable the further you travel from the central areas. The neighbourhood I’m saying in boasts rickety 50-year-old trams featuring razor-sharp ticket validators (two of my fingers were bloody before I felt any pain) and old ladies in babushkas squeezing themselves through the dense crowd to collect transit payment.

To my great joy, I’ve discovered that one can see an opera for $1.20 at the National Opera House. That’s cheaper than a bag of chips in Canada. The most expensive ticket is about $25. The season also features several works by Ukrainian composers, which I read about but could not find back in Canada. I’m pretty thrilled. Next weekend should be a triple hit consisting of one ballet and two operas.

While searching for the opera house, we stumbled upon two street performers who could have made a perfect postcard of Ukrainian stereotypes. They were twin sisters – blonde, modelesque and dressed to the nines – playing banduras and singing Ukrainian folksongs in harmony. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but there was a creepy older man filming them quite closely on his iPhone so maybe you can find that video on the internet (here’s one with no sound, who needs sound with women like that?).

See my sister’s take on the situation here.

* Granted, there are lots of stilettoed women in the slummy suburbs too, hopping over puddles and weaving stealthy through streets dug up for plumbing repairs some years ago.

The art of the bio (Part I)

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Writing your own biography, in third person, can be a bit of a challenge. You need to find that fine balance between pointing out your brilliance and turning yourself into the next coming of Jesus. How often do you find yourself rolling your eyes or simply blanking out when you read some composer’s bio in a concert program? I recently came across an example, which was actually nauseating:

Blank’s list of works includes orchestral and chamber music—vocal and instrumental—as well as scores for theater, dance and film. His music has been called “brilliant” (Boston Globe), “stunning” (Milwaukee Journal), “wonderfully idiomatic” (Salt Lake Tribune), “haunting” (Strings Magazine) and “remarkable” (Fanfare). Chicago Tribune music critic […] called Blank’s Piece1, “a cosmic beauty … of acutely crafted music.” And music critic […], of Classical Review, called Blank’s work Piece2, ‘a very impressive and significant world premiere … the composer makes the music sing magnificently.”

Aside from reading like verbal masturbation, this masterpiece of writing also tells me absolutely nothing about this composer. Who is he? What are his values, his interests? Has he done anything cool lately? Frankly, I don’t particularly care what these people whom I don’t know from newspapers I have never read have to say about this guy, even if he is a “cosmic beauty.”

A good way to put your reader in a coma is listing every single performer who’s ever played your music in every possible country, and every damn famous person you “studied” with*.

Blank2 has worked with such distinguished soloists as John Smith, Jane Doe, Pinky Piklvich, Rusty Nail…….[this is where you blank out because you’ve never heard about any of these twenty people]. Her music has been performed by orchestras such as the Springfield Community Philharmonic, The Sackville Orchestral Players, The Wolfville Symphony, The Prince George Community Philharmonic…..and has been premiered in Uzbekistan, Luxemburg, Montenegro…and the following 49 of the 50 US states: Utah, Vermont, Ohio, Missouri….

Again, not only is this kind of bio impossible to read because the letters automatically go out of focus, but it also tells me nothing about you except that some famous people and a bunch of others cared to play your music. Tell me who you are, not what others think about you, and do it as quickly as possible. My attention span is very short, especially if I’m trying to read your bio between pieces.

Next time I will put together some tips for effective (and efficient) bio writing.

* had a 10-minute master class with, shook hanks with at a conference, etc…

Bundle Update

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I’ve been lost in opera/thesis land for a while, hiding out in my parents’ jungle-like garden home. I haven’t been keeping up with the outside world all that well (the vegetation is thick!), but I bring you a few updates on older stuff and a peek at a new initiative to promote experimental music.

A couple of weeks ago, in The Power of Bundles, I talked about a nifty site selling indie music as a pay-what-you-want bundle. With only 10 hours left to go, I went to check out its progress. It seems the sales slowed down a little after the initial spurt and the total now sits around $400,000. It’s a healthy $66,000 per album minus charity and the website’s share. More importantly, this music reached an audience of almost 50,000 people. Definitely an idea worth exploring for contemporary art music.

I’d like to point out a new experimental music company braving the web frontier. Soundcarrier Music Network* is a new site founded by Halifax musicians Norman Adams and Alex Kall active in the Atlantic improv scene. The site distributes “improvised, experimental, new and free music” selling both studio albums and high quality live recordings. The approach recognizes the value of distributing rougher concert recordings, which is especially appropriate for the more improv-based scene they cater to. The site also charges more for individual tracks longer than 10 minutes. Soundcarrier’s catalogue is still quite small and I’m not sure how they are promoting themselves, but it’s worth keeping an eye on them if you are into that sort of thing.

In Explores of New Frontiers I talked about a somewhat misguided use of crowdfunding platforms. I hoped to be wrong because they seem like a lovely organization, but a month in, that particular campaign is sitting at only $380. But they still have 27 days to go. Maybe their fans will come through in the end.

In other news, I finally bought my plane tickets to Kyiv (Kiev) and will have the pleasure of spending the night on a bench at the Frederic Chopin airport in Warsaw. I am expecting a piano at every gate featuring skillful renditions of mazurkas and nocturnes by the flight attendants. It should set me up nicely for my work in Ukraine (see Village Crawl in Ukraine).

* University-trained musicians love long names and ‘networks.’ Perhaps they felt the need to expand it out because there are already quite a few things named ‘soundcarrier’ floating around on the web, including a maker of amplifiers and a band.

The Power of Bundles

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There’s a nifty idea being explored on a website that sells video games, both commercial and indie, for instant download. Steam occasionally bundles several games into a little package that contains a combination of popular and more obscure games. These bundles are often pay-what-want, but despite the fact that most people only dish out a few bucks, Steam manages to collect several million dollars in sales because of the sheer volume of bundles sold worldwide. I don’t know exactly how the earnings divide between the game developers and the site, but each developer has a chance to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from this bundling. And since all this takes place in the digital sphere, the distribution costs are minimal.

The first time I heard of this concept, I thought, “wouldn’t it be interesting to bundle contemporary music that way?” Pick a couple of well-known composers and bundle them with some emerging artists. Sell the bundle as pay-what-you-want or maybe as a subscription service. But lo and behold, it seems there is already a site exploring this idea with music, though in the more ‘popular’ sphere.

The Humble Bundle is bundling five albums from indie artists of different genres and giving customers control over pricing and even distribution of their money. Once you’ve picked the amount you are willing to part with, there are three sliders that let you distribute that sum between three possible beneficiaries: the artists, charity and the website itself.

The genius of the site’s design is the real time statistics. The site shows the total bundles purchased and the total amount earned, and it calculates averages. Your contribution makes the figures grow in real time making you feel like you are making an impact. It’s immediate gratification. The averages also help you decide on a ‘fair’ payment and make you feel generous if you pay more. The site lists the highest ‘bidders’ so you can proudly put your alias on display if you pay over $100.

The other nifty feature is the bonus sixth album, which can be unlocked by paying more than the current average. Since the average is calculated in real time, this feature is designed to automatically drive the average price up. Its seems, however, that at some point the average levels out and goes up very, very slowly since most people probably only pay a penny more each time. In the last 10 hours the average has only risen by three cents, from $8.08 to $8.11, but considering volume, it’s probably still making a difference.

That might seem like a measly price for six full albums, but when you consider the potential volume and the very low cost of distribution, it makes economic sense. In the last 10 hours, the bundle has made about $36,000 bringing the total to over $227,000 with almost 28,000 bundles sold. That’s almost $38,000 per album minus charity and contribution to the website. The bundle will be available for the next 13 days. I will update you on its success towards the end.

I would love to see someone do this with contemporary art music. Or maybe bundling contemporary music with classics to foster that sense of discovery. Of course, the big question is whether a platform like this can be sustainable or if it only works once, as a kind of sensation of the moment.

Misplaced power

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I live a very nomadic lifestyle, changing addresses every four to six months, like a criminal on the run. I leave a trail of forgotten and abandoned items all over the country, a residue of my activity. Having to account for the last two years of my places of residence on my recent passport application was quite a memory exercise.* My most recent exodus, conducted in the middle of intense thesis writing, has been a particularly disorganized affaire. While chanting to myself it-does-not-have-to-be-perfect-or-particularly-good-it-just-has-to-be-done as a kind of mantra, I flew away leaving an explosion of half packed boxes for my poor boyfriend to sort through.**

There is nothing quite like getting off the plane in a new city, weighed down like a pack mule with your fancy laptop, large midi-keyboard, audio interface, USB-charging camera and eReader, and realizing that you left the laptop power adapter on the other side of the continent. Suddenly all these interconnected items completely lose their meaning and function. They turn from great instruments of power, vessels for your fountain of creativity, into heavy hulls of useless plastic and metal. It is even worse when you are in the midst of a mad dash to finish your rather belated thesis: the moment of realization is accompanied by a sinking feeling as the world collapses around you into a vacuum of despair. In that moment, you know with absolute certainty that you would give your firstborn to whatever person or supernatural power able to deliver that funny little box with two cables sticking out of either end into your trembling hands.

And now that the adapter is safely back in my loving embrace***, I can go back to my routine of procrastination through blogging. Ironically, having to work on an old, slow PC, which I stole from my sister, while waiting for the adapter to show up, forced a kind of surge in productivity. The computer was simply too slow to get too distracted. It wasn’t worth going to Facebook or checking email when not absolutely necessary. So what does that say about the power of all this technology?

I’d rather blog about it than think on that too deeply. Back to the opera!

* Does the Banff Centre count if, lacking another address, you can technically be classified as homeless while you are there?
** Please forgive me, dearest! I love you!
*** Since it was the above-mentioned boyfriend who delivered the adapter through express post, I guess he’ll be the one who’ll have to deal with any firstborns who might appear in the future. Thank you and you are welcome!

Explorers of new frontiers

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Thursday is blog day so I’ll tear myself away from the sacred rites of thesis worship to bring you a couple of examples to connect to my previous writing.

Facebook fan pages

Last week in “Why should I ‘like’ you?” I discussed Facebook fan pages and organization profiles. The question was, how does an organization go from simply asking for your ‘like’ to actually engaging you in their little online community. Take a look at Carnegie Hall’s page. It’s an iconic institution so it’s not a surprise that they have over 60,000 ‘likes.’

They are also trying very hard to go beyond that and to give their ‘likers’ a way to get involved. They are currently running a campaign called “30 Day Summer Challenge” where each day they ask you to supply a piece of music that fits some criteria. I missed the beginning of this, but it seems to be a contest. I think the person who answers the most questions will get some sort of prize. This is not the sort of thing to attract a user like me, but I’m probably not the target. The targets are engaging.

Carnegie Hall also posts various bits of archival material to give people glimpses of its past and all the iconic figures who have a history there. Some of their posts are meant to be inspirational in the lofty sense or the cute sense (for example, posting pictures of loving fathers bringing their kids to Carnegie Hall events).

Aided by Facebook’s Timeline layout, this page looks like a scrapbook that users are invited to expand with their own little signatures (as if saying “I’ve been here” on some tree or rock). And while people are browsing this fairly trivial material, reliving their own experiences, they also come across reminders about upcoming events and special programs. Carnegie Hall’s agenda is pushed through quietly, without too much yelling.

Crowdfunding

In “Crowdfunding as a leveraging tool” I touched on the idea of harnessing the power of sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to finance your projects. I recently came across an Indiegogo project started by a Halifax non-profit, Centre for Art Tapes. I am really curious to see how this campaign will do because everything about it tells me that it’s all wrong. It’s missing the point.

  1. It’s not raising money for any particular project. Where is my money going exactly? I am selfish and I want my name to be attached to something more glamorous than ‘operational funding.’
  2. The perks don’t get you anything that you can’t get outside this campaign: memberships and rental credits. There are only two perks, which might be worth getting through the campaign because they save you about $2.50 from the full price. Every other perk is simply an overpriced membership.
  3. When all the perks are handed out, I wonder how much money the campaign will actually bring the organization. They are giving away things that people would pay them for anyway as a regular part of using the Centre. If everyone claims the “Associate” or “Individual Member” perks, the Centre will actually be losing money. Have they done the math? Yes, you will probably always have to use some of the campaign money to pay for the perks, but the trick is to make them something that will naturally come out of the project without costing you extra.

In short, this whole campaign is nothing more than a regular membership and donation drive aimed at people who already use the centre. The whole thing is a perfect example of applying an old mode of thinking to a new tool in the belief that the glamour of the tool itself will bring better results.