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Lemkovyna songs will be played on Antonych motherland

On 27th of November, there will be held a concert “Lemkovyna-Lem” in Lemkovyna village Novytsia, where Ukrainian poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych was born

Ancient Lemkovyna songs will be heard once again in the centuries-old walls of the “Dom Ikon” and will be intertwined with musical improvisations and video art. Ukrainian, Polish and Belarusian artists will come to Novytsia, located in Horlitz County, Poland. The director of the performance “Lemkovyna-Lem” is Ulyana Gorbachevska from Lviv.

 

«Lemkovyna-Lem» will not be the regular online concert. It is rather a time of being together, reflection and immersion in songs in a unique place among the mountains in Lemkovyna region, where Bohdan-Ihor Antonych spent his childhood. The concert will take place in an old wooden house that once served as a restaurant in Novytsia, later a post office, and is currently operating as “Dom Ikon”. The atmosphere will be complemented by video art, created on the basis of pictures of the Lemkovyna region in 1920-30 that are received from the Venhrynovych family archive .

 

November 27, 19:00 (Ukrainian time) Watch a live stream of chamber concert «Lemkovyna-Lem»: https://youtu.be/GbvaIAYurXo

 


Creators of performance:

Ulyana Gorbachevska – a famous Ukrainian singer and researcher of authentic songs, performance director.

Yulia Doshna –  a researcher and performer of Lemkovyna songs, who inherited them from her mother and grandmother. When it comes to a folk song in Poland, her name is the first name that comes to mind.

Oleksiy Vorsoba –  Belarusian composer and virtuoso accordionist.

Richard Lyatetskiy – a Polish multi-instrumentalist who creates music that emerges here and now. Vice-President of the Polish Community of Contemporary Music.

Maciej Kudlacik – a Polish multi-instrumentalist, universal and skilled musician-improviser on strings. He writes and performs music for movies.

VJ groupe CUBE — one of the first and most famous in Ukraine group of video makers, represented in the project by VJ Glow (Sergiy Pilyavets). The group participates in iconic art festivals, does mapping, media installations, video graffiti on buildings.


The concert will include both well-known Lemkovyna songs (“Oi, Vershe miy Vershe,” “Gameritsky Krai”, “Ked’my pryshla karta”) and rare ones found in old songbooks and archives. Even the performers themselves do not know the final program yet, because each time “Lemkovyna-Lem” concert is different. Singers, musicians and VJ will gather in Novytsia a few days before the live-stream to create a concert together. “We want to listen to Novytsia . This land itself will tell you what songs fit now the best ”, the artists say.

 

Ulyana Horbachevska:

 

“Let these songs sing with us. I am sure that even through the screen you will feel the energy of the mountains, energy of the old house, the fireplace with the fire, songs …we will be together: people sitting in their houses and we , in the wooden house in Novytsia . You may pour a bit of wine into glasses with us, to sing, to cry, to rejoice… I would say that it will be rather not a concert, but rather being together”.

“The range of Lemkovyna songs is exceptionally unique: from funny and driving songs, to such sophisticated ones that you can put them on symphonic music. They contain all the manifestations of existence: from death and metaphysics, to loving explosive passionate energy. They are so strong that they have remained and sound to this day, although the Lemkovyna space that created them has already disappeared”.

 «Lemkovyna-Lem»– started with master classes in Novytsia last year. It was later presented in Poland and Ukraine. Every time the concert program changes. In 2020, a chamber presentation took place in “Didova Khatchyna” in the Hutsul region and a concert in the old tram depot “Lem Station” in Lviv. This year, due to quarantine, it was necessary to go online. To make the audience feel the energy of Lemkivshchyna, the creators of the performance decided to arrange a live stream of atmospheric, chamber concert in Novytsia. From an ancient wooden house, in the history of which both the sacred and the vital were layered, as in Lemkovyna songs.

By the way, the visual symbol of the project was a unique beadwork “Lemkovyna crisis”, and the word “lem” added to the name,is a characteristic of the Lemkovyna conversation, used usually to enhance the meaning or means “only”, “only”…


Novytsia is a village in Lemkovyna, the Gorlice County of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in Poland. The “Innowica” Theater Festival and the Jazz Bez Music Festival are held here every year, bringing together artists mainly from Poland and Ukraine. The Ukrainian-Slovak-Polish choir “Nowicanto” is acting here. Dom Ikon  hosts international icon painting master classes. Icons created in master classes will be the background for the Lemkovyna-Lem performance .

 


The project is funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland under the NIEPODLEGŁA Multi-Year Program for 2017-2022, under the grant program of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute “Cultural Scaffolding” and ZAiKS “.

Project partners: Polskie Towarzystwo Muzyki Współczesnej (Poland),  YMCA Lviv (Ukraine).