Ukraine Aid

300.000€ to Ukrainian Musicians and Music Projects

The war in Ukraine also has severe consequences for musicians and music makers. The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is therefore committed to helping musicians in need and supports a number of projects dedicated to musical life in Ukraine. This includes on-site assistance, but of course also the opportunity to work and perform outside Ukraine. The foundation has provided a total of 300,000 euros and is involved in the following initiatives.

Music Project Fund Ukraine

in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and Culture Connects e.V.

Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, many outstanding Ukrainian musicians have had to flee to countries like Germany. Many of them are now trying to continue their artistic activities, have re-established their networks in Ukraine and organized concerts. In doing this, they also promote the visibility of the Ukrainian musical landscape in Germany. This commitment is to be further supported.

For this purpose, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Goethe-Institut jointly established the Music Project Fund Ukraine. It supports music projects organized by German institutions in cooperation with Ukrainian musicians and is implemented by the association Culture Connects e.V. in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut. Currently, 12 projects can be supported with a total of 160,000 euros.

Further information and application

Platform for music professionals and Funding Pot for Cultural Institutions

in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and the international NGO Artists at Risk

Together with the international NGO Artists at Risk and supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the Goethe-Institut pools offers from cultural institutions in Germany that offer artistic residencies for hosting Ukrainian artists and cultural practitioners at risk.

The matching portal for cultural professionals is part of a comprehensive package of measures for which the Federal Foreign Office is providing funds from the 2022 supplementary budget to mitigate the consequences of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

Currently supported are Oleksandra Kopelyan, Myroslava Bukata and Marina Mateenko.

Funding Projects

News from Ukraine – The exile orchestra MRIYA plays new Ukrainian music

Förderverein Culture Connects, Hamburg (DE)

The exile orchestra MRIYA (Dream in German) has an incredible story: the first four professional musicians who came to Berlin after the outbreak of war found each other thanks to social media. The freelance musicians and volunteer managers Roman Ohem and Lev Kucher organized the first concerts for the women’s ensemble, which grew rapidly. At the same time, they systematically compiled lists of all the professional musicians who had fled and entered into partnerships with cultural institutions. All these efforts led to a furious debut in the Berlin Philharmonie in May 2022, which was praised by the press, and the exile orchestra has been performing under the name MRIYA in Germany and Europe ever since. The musicians have performed over 60 concerts to date.

The orchestra acts as a cultural ambassador for new Ukrainian music. For Ukraine’s symbolic Independence Day on 24 August , a commissioned work is to be premiered on 25 August 2024 that symbolizes the Ukrainian people’s journey of suffering, as well as the name of the world’s largest plane, which was destroyed by Russia: Mriya – the dream. A word created by the Ukrainian national poet in the 19th century – an artificial word but 100% Ukrainian. The program is complemented by milestones of new music and classical modernism: K. A. Hartmann – Concerto Funebre (1939) with soloist Valery Sokolov and the 2nd Symphony by Valentin Silvestrov for flute, percussion, piano and strings. The crowning glory is the commissioned work by Maxim Kolomiiets. A refugee orchestra in exile enlivens the contemporary music scene and acts as a cultural ambassador for a neglected culture in Germany, while also sending out a signal of cultural understanding and a glimmer of hope away from the war that violates international law. The concert of the MRIYA orchestra is supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
culture-connects.org

Date

August 25, 2024
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Ukraine Triptych – The world premiere on the 2nd anniversary of the war in Ukraine

To mark the 2nd anniversary of the war in Ukraine, the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra will perform Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf’s Ukraine Triptych in Gera. The world premiere is made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. The project aims to manifest peace, reflect the current situation in the world and express the message of humanistic values through music.

The Kyiv Symphony Orchestra is one of several symphony orchestras from Kyiv. It has been based in Gera for several months and for an extended period of time, where it can work with the support of German politics. The musicians give concerts, go on tours and played at the NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022, among others. The orchestra represents music from Ukraine in Western countries, especially in Germany. The aim of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra is not only to make Ukrainian music known, but also to react to the current situation of war.

Together with the German composer Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, the Ukraine Triptych has now been created. It is a work for orchestra and three soloists that is neither a war nor an anti-war piece, but a poetic response to the current situation.

The first movement, Holodomor (Starvation), refers to the starvation of Ukraine by Stalin in 1933, a national trauma and genocide that is now being repeated by Russia causing a global food crisis. The movement is for soprano (without text) and describes an empty, desolate landscape. The second movement, Der Jüdische Friedhof von Warschau (The Jewish Cemetery of Warsaw), is a musical field of 33 tombstones rising into the sky like great orchestral steles. A cimbalom solo can be heard. Mahnkopf thus thematizes death indirectly, via a cemetery in another country. He undertook extensive photographic research in Warsaw for this purpose. The third movement depicts the atomic bomb indirectly and is called Kubricks Bombe (Kubrick’s Bomb) after his film. The music is a big crescendo, but without a final bang. The solo instrument is a five-string electric bass guitar. The three soloists then play a one-minute humane gesture.

Further information:
kyivsymphony.com

Date

February 23, 2024
Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Gera

Concert of the Ukraina Munich Chamber Orchestra

On 8 February, the Lichtesel association is organizing a concert with a varied programme. Works by Ukrainian composers from the period between 1775 and 2003 will be performed. Five of the seven pieces will feature soloists on violin, viola, flute, voice and the traditional musical instrument bandura, accompanied by the Ukraina Munich Chamber Orchestra.

Further information:
lichtesel.com

Date

February 8, 2024
Kulturhaus Milbertshofen

Kyiv Contemporary Music Days

Kyiv Contemporary Music Days is an educational and concert platform for classical contemporary music in Kiev, Ukraine. They organize festivals, concerts of chamber, orchestral and electroacoustic music, public lectures, master classes and workshops for both professional and general audiences. Kyiv Contemporary Music Days builds a community around contemporary music in Kyiv and creates new formats and opportunities for the education and professional realization of artists* in Ukraine and around the world.

Among the projects supported are the Kyiv Contemporary Music Days in Berlin, which will take place in collaboration with ensemble mosaik and KNM Berlin. On June 10 and 11, 2023, ensemble mosaik will feature composers and musicians from Ukraine at the Acker Stadt Palast as part of its annual workshop festival UpToThree. The program includes works by Mykhailo Chedryk, Anton Koshelev, Boris Loginov, Adrian Mokanu, among others.

KCMD Berlin will continue on July 1, 2023 at Villa Elisabeth with listening cities : kyiv. As part of the multimedia project, the ensemble KNM Berlin and KCMD, will present interviews, music, live and media performances. The day will end with the concert …So They Grow Like Sunflowers by KNM Berlin and Kiev-based soloist Nazarii Stets (double bass), conducted by Stephan Winkler. The concert program includes solo and ensemble works by Rebecca Saunders, Clemens Gadenstätter, Kaija Saariaho, Anna Korsun, Anna Arkushyna, Anton Koshelev and Adrian Mocanu.

Further information:
kcmd.eu

Dates

June 10 and 11, 2023, Acker Stadt Palast Berlin

July 1, 2023, Villa Elisabeth Berlin

9th Internationales Provinzlärm-Festival for New Music 2023

Provinzlärm is an international festival for contemporary music and has been held every two years since 2007 in the Baltic Sea resort of Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein. The musical focus in 2023 will be on Ukraine, a country in which an extraordinarily diverse and lively music scene has developed since independence in 1991 and which has now been in a state of war since 24 February 2022. Its own traditions, interconnections and perspectives on contemporary composing, but also its Soviet-Russian heritage, and its gaze and orientation towards the West and the recognition of the autonomy of Ukrainian culture, are to be the focus of the upcoming Provincial Noise Festival and will be made visible in several concert programmes.

In order to support Ukrainian musicians and ensembles, especially now during the war in their country, it is particularly important to the festival this time to invite musicians from Ukraine and to give them the opportunity to continue and develop their work even in times of war and to present it to an audience. In addition to the Ensemble in Residence Ensemble Reflexion K, the Ensemble Senza Sforzando from Odessa and the two young performers of the Duo Rotkäppchen will perform at Provinzlärm 2023, which is made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
provinzlaerm-festival.de

Dates

February 24 – 26, 2023, St. Nicolai Church and Künstlerhaus, Eckernförde

Festival: Widerstand der Klänge (Resistance of Sounds) – New Music from Ukraine

With the 5-day festival Widerstand der Klänge (Resistance of Sounds), the In Situ Art Society presents a broad spectrum of Ukrainian contemporary classical music, starting with the composers of the “Kiev avant-garde” from the 1960s (Valentin Silvestrov, Leonid Hrabovsky) to the youngest generation (Emil Borisenko, *2002), including also the Kremenchuk-born Leo Ornstein (1895-2002). It is exciting to observe how the musical development over the years corresponded to the spirit of the times and how it also went its own way.

The programme was created in collaboration with the Russian-German singer Natalia Pschenitschnikova and the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets. It includes chamber music and choral works, instrumental and vocal works as well as electro-acoustic music interpreted by Ensemble Musikfabrik and the Asasello Quartet as well as members of the Bonner Kammerchor with Ukrainian colleagues who had to leave their homeland – under the direction of Olga Prykhodko, Ukraine’s leading choral conductor in the field of contemporary music.

Further information:
in-situ-art-society.de

Dates

April 12 – 16, 2023, Dialograum Kreuzung an St. Helena, Bonn