BRAMA, October 4, 2000, 1:00pm EDT

Benefit concert series debuts in Washington DC

Washington, D.C., USA - Volodymyr Vynnytsky, an outstanding Ukrainian pianist, performed a concerto for piano by Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk at the opening benefit concert of the 2000-2001 cultural season sponsored by the The Washington Group Cultural Fund, in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine. Several members of The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra performed two works, one by Wolfgang Mozart and one by Ludwig Beethoven. The new concert series is raising funds for the procurement of musical instruments for the Lviv Conservatory in Ukraine.

- ©Morgan Williams, 10/3/00 Vynnytsky at the piano performing Skoryk's "Concerto No. 3 For Piano and String Quartet"

Vynnytsky gave an exciting, sparkling, passionate performance of Skoryk's Concerto No. 3 For Piano and String Quartet. The Concerto is a post-modernist work, comprising three movements titled "Prayer", "Dream", and "Life". The composition reflects on the human condition in the era of Stalinist tyranny and terror in which the composer registers his reaction to the enormities of an epoch dominated by totalitarian terror and the dehumanization of man. Concerto No. 3 was performed as a world premiere at Music Mountain in Falls Village, Connecticut, on July 12, 1998, with Maestro Skoryk at the piano and the Leontovych String Quartet.

Members of The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, oboist Igor Leshchishin and violinist Zinoviy Bogachek, both of whom are from Ukraine, performed Mozart's "Oboe Quartet in F Major" and Beethoven's "Sextet For Two Horns, Two Violins, Viola and Cello". Mr. Leshchishin has been the principal oboist of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra since 1998.

Volodymyr Vynnytsky, a laureate of the Margueritte Long-Jacques Thibaud International Piano Competition in Paris (1983), has established himself as a distinctive musical personality and has received critical and audience acclaim for his fresh and penetrating readings of scores. A native of Lviv, he studied at the Lviv Music School for Gifted Children and later at the Moscow Conservatory where he received his doctorate in 1983. He subsequently taught at the Kyiv Conservatory.

- ©Morgan Williams, 10/3/00 Volodymyr Vynnytsky

In 1994, Mr. Vynnytsky and cellist Vagram Saradjian, performing together, won the Distringuished Artists Award in New York and made a critically acclaimed debut at Carnegie Hall. Residing in the US since 1991, he is a visiting member of the piano faculty at State University of New York, in Purchase, N.Y. and an artist-in-residence at the Music and Art Center of Greene County, in Hunter, N.Y.

Myroslav Skoryk one of Ukraine's most prominent present day composers, is the author of a diverse and impressive oeuvre. Born in Lviv in 1938, Mr. Shoryk entered the Lviv Music School in 1945, but in 1947, he and his parents were deported to Siberia and were not permitted to return until 1955. He is presently the music director of the Lviv Chamber Orchestra, which for the past five years, has toured widely and has been especially well received at the Bayreuth summer youth festival in Germany. Mr. Shoryk is the winner of the prestigious Shevchenko Prize and holds the title "People's Artist of Ukraine".

Among Mr. Skoryk's most popular compositions is the "Concerto For Orchestra (Carpathian)", awarded the first prize at the 1991 Kyiv Composition Competition. Maestro Skoryk is presently completing his new opera 'MOSES" to premiere in the spring of 2001 to mark the centennial of the splendid, historic Lviv Opera house and to celebrate the new millenium.

The next concert will be Monday, October 16th, and will feature Solomiya Ivakhiv on violin and Christian Anum-Dorhuso on piano. Future concerts will feature Natalia Khoma on cello, Volodymry Vynnytsky on piano, Anna Bachynsky, soprano, Roman Tsymbala, tenor, Oksana Krovytska, soprano and Zenoviy Bogachek, on violin.

Chrystia Sonevytsky, a board member of The Washington Group Cultural Fund, serves as Chair of the Benefit Concert Series. All concerts at held at The Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre in Arlington, Virginia.

E. Morgan Williams
President
ArtUkraine.com
Ukraine Market Reform Group
Ukraine Business Development and Investment Group
Kyiv, Ukraine
380 44 212 5586 Kyiv
380 44 459 3322 Kyiv Mobile
E-Mail: morgankiev@yahoo.com
Web: www.ArtUkraine.com
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