The Kyiv Avant-Garde

This evening presents five works by leading composers of Kyiv avant-garde group. In the 1960s, they created music that challenged socialist realism – the only acceptable musical and aesthetic style in the USSR. They maintained contacts with composers in Europe and the US and smuggled books about 12-tone music and scores of the Second Viennese School and Polish modernists, in order to diligently study them and “catch-up with the West.” The result, however, was not a replication of Western European post-war avant-garde, but highly original music, which was valued by the audiences on the other side of the Iron Curtain and scorned by the Soviet ideologues in their native Ukraine. 

Performed by Anna Shelest, Mivos Quartet, Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, and Talea Ensemble

7:30 PM Pre-Concert Talk by Peter Schmelz (Arizona State University, Tempe)

8:00 PM CONCERT

TICKET INFORMATION

Because this year’s festival will be streamed online due to the on-going COVID 19 pandemic, ticket purchases will provide audience members with a link to the concert that can be accessed as many times as you wish once the broadcast has premiered. Tickets to single events range from $5 to $25.

ALL-ACCESS PASS

We are also offering two exciting options to increase your access to this year's festival events.

Patron: A $50 ticket provides you with an "all-access" pass for the entire weekend of performances and events--no need to register individually for each event stream.

Sponsor: A $100 ticket will give you access to all events as well as a printed souvenir program of the festival and access to one of two exclusive events:

• An interview with the composer Leonid Hrabovsky, whose music will be played as part of Saturday's concert of the Kyiv Avant-Garde

• A live discussion with Volodymyr Sheiko, General Director of the Ukrainian Institute in Kyiv, about their burgeoning efforts in the realm of cultural diplomacy (Conducted in Ukrainian)

The festival is open to the public and conducted in English.