Yurii Shevchenko, just like a border guard, rises between two sovereign states – theater and music. Both of these “states” are his creative homeland, crossing border is visa free and contacts with foreigners are welcome. Shevchenko is capable of hearing music with the ears of a theater-lover and can see a performance with the eyes of a musician. He is an author of music for over a hundred plays and is an absolute champion for the number of Kyiv Pectoral awards – he received seven of them! There is no other actor or play director in Ukrainian capital who would have as many of them. Even though Shevchenko is such a renowned man, he is still an extremely bright person, without a slightest trace of envy or arrogance, and he is also an ironic companion in a good way. This year the composer was awarded Mykola Lysenko Prize for two ballets composed for a Canadian group of folk dance Shumka (again, there are no state borders). Recently, the premiere of the play Cross Paths, music to which was written by the maestro, took place in the Ivan Franko National Theater.
Music expert from Kyiv Tamara Hnativ helped Shevchenko to find the music “key” to the prose of Ivan Franko. She was the one who told Shevchenko about everyday music culture of western Ukraine and also found in her home library and gave him three collections of the founder of Ukrainian jazz Bohdan Vesolovsky (by the way, recently the popular musician, front man of VV band Oleh Skrypka turned to the tunes of this composer). The main characters of the Cross Paths are from the circle of lawyers who would stay up until late talking in coffee shops. Thus, in the play we can hear tango, batiar songs, and a lullaby. All tangos and waltzes that permeate the play were inspired by the melody of somewhat frightful lullaby Stars are Flickering, all Children are Sleeping (its content with a love triangle and murder is strangely rhyming with the Franko’s story). Shevchenko has once heard this lullaby in New York in one of the recording studios. When the play was arranged by director Dmytro Chyrypiuk, it turned out that all the music pieces written by the maestro fit in there, except for this lullaby.
Shevchenko admitted that “the most important rule of his work on each new play is to forget about all that was written before and try to find a ‘key’ to the play inside of yourself.” There is no one possible right decision in such matters, but a personal unique intonation of a performance, incorporated in the musical score, becomes a criterion of how true and sincere it is.
CANADIAN HERITAGE
Mr. Shevchenko, you are the winner of the prestigious Mykola Lysenko Prize for the ballets What the Wind Brought and Night of Perun. Who did you write them for and in what plays were they used?
“Both ballets are from my ‘Canadian heritage’ and they were written for the famous Diaspora group Shumka. What the Wind Brought is a one-act ballet that lasts for half an hour. It is practically plotless. In the Canadian version it is called Pathways to Hopak. I composed it for the festival of modern choreography that took place in Ottawa in 2006. Pathways to Hopak finished that festival. It tells a story of a person who goes his path from cradle to death. The central image of the work is the wind in the field as a symbol of life. In the choreography of this ballet created by Viktor Lytvynov there is demiclassics, classics, modern, and Ukrainian folk dance all mixed in one, thus, it is all on the verge of styles. Each of the eight parts has its own name: Lullaby, Wind, Love, Fight, etc., and in the end they dance hopak. All Shumka’s great performances end with hopak – it is their forte. Even when they thought of making ballet version of Romeo and Juliet, at the end they planned to dance hopak too. Night of Perun was also composed for Shumka, this ballet tells the story of the beginning of Christianity. It remotely resembles Igor Stravinksy’s The Rite of Spring, even though I had no intention to directly quote the classic. The main characters are He, Her, and Priest. She sacrifices herself for his sake, and He…”
Pursues a career?
“Yes, something similar to that. Night of Perun was part of a program that consisted of three different performances with my music. By the way, Perun (1993) was my first ballet staged by Brian Webb, very famous Canadian choreographer who specializes in modern dance. The second ballet for children and youth Katrusia was composed the same year and its premier took place in 1995.
“By the way, Pavlo Virsky Ensemble always was the best example for Shumka. Back in the Soviet times dancers from Shumka came to Ukraine and studied in the studio of the Ensemble, even thought their main profession could be anything from a doctor to oil industry worker. Today it is easier since many of Ukrainians immigrated to Canada and Shumka may hire a teacher from Ukraine for a year or two. The fact that Shumka began staging big story ballets is a revolution. None of folk dance groups did anything like this before Shumka. Usual program of Shumka consists of two hours of music, be it one big ballet or a series of small dances. All the work from the beginning to the end is done by the whole team. Soviet artistic councils are baby talk compared to artistic council of Shumka, where nothing is decided by the will of one person. The group is partially funded by the government, but mainly it exists on the money from large and small private investors, who are involved in specific projects.”
How do people that fund the performances influence their aesthetics and content? Did you feel any pressure from them?
“No, it is impossible.”
How did you meet with Shumka and what is so valuable in your cooperation with them now?
“Now, the whole group are my friends, with whom I have worked for nearly 20 years. It all began like this: two Canadians came to my house, they were referred to me by a well-known Kyiv artist Andrii Aleksandrovych-Dochevsky (they met him through the late artist from Lviv Volodymyr Furyk). I showed them a couple of my works. After a while I received a phone call from Canada with a request to compose a musical theme for five minutes. After a month they asked me to write another fragment and then they asked me to come to Canada and write a whole ballet. It was a great event for me because before that I had never traveled anywhere and was not going to. In Canada I worked in perfect working conditions.”
Before this you wrote music only for drama theater, is that right?
“Yes. Ballet is a completely different world, another language. Plus it was a different country and a different audience. Shumka is based in Edmonton with forest and big private houses around. I settled into one of such houses. Every morning I went for a walk along the reserve areas, then I’d have a breakfast, and would sit down to work. Once every three days I would go to the rehearsal with my new composed music: I played it on the piano and saw the result of my work in faces of the dancers. I could understand right away what turned out good and what needed to be changed.”
Did anyone suggest you to stay permanently in Canada?
“No, there were no such offers. I doubt if I would anyway. It is still a different country. For me it is more pleasant to live at home and travel from time to time.”
“ONE NEEDS A GREAT DEAL OF COURAGE TO GIVE UP MUSIC IN A PERFORMANCE”
This year theater-lovers in Kyiv will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the municipal Kyiv Pectoral Award – you are an absolute leader among the holders of the prize. Could you share your recipe for success?
“For the anniversary of the prize there was published an excellent booklet and now I know for sure that I have exactly seven Pectorals. In recent years I got totally confused. I was awarded especially often in my first years of artistic career. Then, perhaps, they got tired of me and began to ‘silence’ my work.”
In your opinion, why do we have a deficit of composers in Kyiv who love theater and are able to work in it?
“It is not about the lack of composers, we have too few plays that need to have music written especially for them. Theaters have no money, thus, they plug the ‘music holes’ with whatever they can. We should not count composers but the composer-director relationships. It is extremely important. Recently a young choreographer asked me to write music for his performance. I advised him to find a composer of the same age so that together they could make first steps, make mistakes, and be successful. I have enough of artistic cooperation. The directors I work with know my strong and weak sides, just like I know the same about them. Each of us will not be able to work with somebody else. I know exactly what they need and they would not be able to explain it to anyone else.”
How has the attitude to music in theaters changed in the recent decades? What trends do you see today compared to Soviet times?
“It is not all about Soviet times or any time at all, it is all about how different people work, what kind of ear and soul they have. A lot depends on a director. However, even the worst director usually understands that he can use music to mask his mistakes. One needs a great deal of courage to give up music in a performance.”
