Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered. Please note that access will not be permitted 15 minutes after the start of the event.
This event will be held in English.
1991 Project presents Zahortsev Days in Paris, co-organized by Columbia Global Paris Center and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. With the support of the Embassy of Ukraine in France. Curated by Anna Stavychenko.
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The Zahortsev Days in Paris continue the spirit of the 2023 Silvestrov Days, organized by the 1991 Project. Like Valentyn Silvestrov, Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Zahortsev was a student of Borys Lyatoshynsky and one of the key figures of the Kyiv avant-garde.
Composer Volodymyr Zahortsev: A Beginner's Guide
The work of Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Zahortsev, student of Borys Lyatoshynsky and one of the members of composers grouping "Kyiv avant-garde", has yet to receive the recognition it deserves in Ukraine. Likewise, he remains almost unknown to the Western listener. A lecture by composer and musicologist Alex Voytenko, a long-time researcher of Zahortsev’s oeuvre, offers a brief introduction to his artistic legacy. The lecture will highlight the key thematic points necessary to become acquainted with the composer and to appreciate the value of his music.
Voytenko will present virtually in Paris from Kyiv, with in-person moderation by musicologist and curator Anna Stavychenko
Speakers
Alex Voytenko is a composer, musicologist, and lecturer at the Department of Musical Computer Technologies of the Glier Kyiv Municipal Academy of Music. Voytenko is primarily an autodidact. Graduated from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (1998–2002), National Music Academy of Ukraine (2002–2007, composition class of Professor Yuri Ishchenko). From 2007–2010, he was a Ph.D. student at the music theory department of the National Music Academy (supervisor—Professor Bogdan Syuta) and defended his thesis in 2012. He is a member of the National Composers Union of Ukraine.
His main scholarly interests are the ontology of music, history of music theory, theory of orchestration, theory of serial composition, history of the Kyiv avant-garde group, Volodymyr Zahortsev’s (1944–2010) oeuvre. In 2021, he published a book In Memoriam. Композитор Володимир Загорцев. Статті, листи, спогади. Матеріали до біографії [“In Memoriam. Composer Volodymyr Zahortsev. Articles, letters, memories. Materials for biography”]. In 2023, he published monograph "Theoretical Foundations of Twelve-Tone Serial Composition".
Voytenko is an author of chamber and symphonic music.
Anna Stavychenko is a classical music curator and producer, art director, and musicologist.
As an opera and art critic, Stavychenko has collaborated with the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Opéra de Paris, the Salzburg Festival, the Bayreuth Festival, the Teatro alla Scala, and La Biennale di Venezia, among others. She has also written as a columnist for Vogue, Marie-Claire, L’Officiel, and other publications in Ukraine.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Stavychenko was the artistic director of the Open Music City Foundation. She also served as executive director of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, producing Ukraine’s first-ever performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in 2021 at the National Opera of Ukraine.
In May 2023, Stavychenko founded the 1991 Project, an initiative aimed at exploring unknown repertoire and supporting talents at risk. The 1991 Project is currently a local partner of Reid Hall, home to the Columbia University Global Paris Center and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. The project’s primary focus is the rich Ukrainian musical repertoire from classicism to the present day.
Volodymyr Zahortsev
Volodymyr Zahortsev (1944 – 2010) was among the last students of Borys Lyatoshynsky, who himself was one of the greatest symphonists of the 20th century and founder of Ukrainian musical modernism. Zahortsev was also the youngest member of the informal underground group known as the Kyiv avant-garde, along with Leonid Grabovsky, Vitaliy Gozdyatsky, Valentyn Silvestrov, and others.
Zahortsev is perhaps the brightest representative of musical structuralism in Ukrainian music, who widely used in the 1960s the latest compositional techniques of the time—dodecaphony, serial pointillism, sonoristics, clusters, graphic-spatial notation. An emblematic example of this period of his work is “Rhythms” for solo piano (1967/1969). In the mid-1970s, Zahortsev moved away from the avant-garde style, composing a series of chamber instrumental concertos and sonatas. However, later he has returned to a more complex musical language, thus combining his own work from the early and middle periods. One of Zahortsev's last compositions, his Piano Trio (2008), is a typical example of this combination.
Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.
