"Between Word and Sound"

Yesterday, I was at a contemporary chamber/classical/orchestral music concert I enjoyed very much indeed. The idea behind the Between Word and Sound project was to get 8 young Ukrainian composers create music "based" on any Polish texts (Jerzy Onuch, head of the Polish Institute in Kyїv, joked they could have chosen Polish phone books had they wished so). All of them chose poetry, naturally. The 8 poems are by W.Szymborska, K.Wojtyla, B.Zadura, H.Poswiatkowska, A.Zagajewski, J.Slowacki, M.Podgórnik, and C.Milosz (and the translators into Ukrainian are V.Yashchuk, D.Matiyash, A.Bondar, and D.Pavlychko). One half of the created music (that is 4 pieces of music) was with words from the chosen poem (a soprano singer sang them) and another half (yet another 4 pieces of music) was without words. The result was quite interesting – and inspiring. Also, I took home a fine slim volume with all the poems and translations and info about the event and the participants. This project was already shown in Lublin, Warsaw and Lviv – and will be shown shown in Vinnytsya, Odesa and Kyїv until the end of this week.