On January 28, Ukrainian composer Leonid Hrabovsky celebrated his 90th birthday. Today, his works are performed both in Ukraine and abroad, including in the United States, where he has lived since the 1990s. In the U.S., the composer is involved in projects that promote new Ukrainian music.
This year, the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, taking place from March 13 to 15 in New York, will feature three works by Leonid Hrabovsky. We invite you to learn more about the festival and the composer’s music that will be performed.
About the Festival
The Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in New York is the only annual festival in North America dedicated to promoting new Ukrainian music. It was founded in 2020 by musicologist Leah Batstone, clarinetist and composer Hlib Kanasevych, and pianist and musicologist James Naumann.
As noted by The New York Times critics Joshua Barone and Zachary Woolfe, “the festival’s very existence has always been a rejection of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia’s assertion that there is no real Ukrainian culture.”
According to Leah Batstone, the idea to create UCMF was inspired by her research into Ukrainian music after the Revolution of Dignity. “It was a moment of freedom — a moment of breaking away from a still very post-Soviet legacy,” the musicologist wrote in an article for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Ukrainian musicians seized “this opportunity to recreate, reframe Ukrainian culture in a really cool, modern way.”
This year’s edition of the festival is titled “Letters and Notes: A Celebration of Music and Literature.”
The project aims to draw the attention of American society to Ukrainian literature and highlight how words and music interact within Ukrainian culture.
The idea of combining musical and literary arts at the festival emerged after Russian missile strikes destroyed the Faktor-Druk printing house in Kharkiv in May 2024. In the festival’s program notes, Batstone writes: “Given Ukrainian music’s strong links to the Ukrainian word, we knew we needed to use our Festival to celebrate and highlight Ukrainian writers as well.”
Two of Hrabovsky’s works featured in the concert programs are cycles for voice and chamber ensemble, set to texts by Ukrainian authors. These are “Pastels” (1964), based on poems by Pavlo Tychyna, and “And It Will Be” (1993), set to the texts of Mykola Vorobiov. His piano piece “Keepsake for Elissa” (1988) will also be performed.
“I Was Fortunate to Read Ukrainian Literature”: Hrabovsky’s Literary Influences
Many of Hrabovsky’s works are inspired by literature, a passion he developed in childhood.
“I was fortunate at school. My Ukrainian literature teacher was the father of the current academician Volodymyr Morenets — the poet Pylyp Morenets. It’s worth noting that at the time, Pavlo Tychyna was the Minister of Education. As a result, Ukrainian and Russian languages and literatures were treated equally. Thanks to Pylyp Hryhorovych, we had the chance to learn about the early works of Tychyna and Rylsky,” the composer recalled in an interview for Muzyka magazine.
Constantly surrounded by Ukrainian intellectual circles, especially writers, played a crucial role in Hrabovsky’s creative development. He connected with figures such as Ivan Dziuba, Ivan Svitlychny, Ivan Drach, Mykola Vinhranovsky, and other authors. The composer recalls: “One of the centers of attraction was the legendary residence of Serhii Parajanov, where many of our artists of that time came to know each other.”
New creative ideas were often born through conversations with poets. “The closest in aesthetics,” as the composer notes, were the texts of his contemporaries Mykola Vorobiov and Mykhailo Hryhoriv, with whom he became acquainted in the 1970s. The composer recalls:
“I can’t exactly remember under what circumstances I first met Vorobiov and Hryhoriv. I remember how the latter told me that Vorobiov had (already!) written 7,000 poems. By that time, I was already somewhat familiar with modern poetry, and the exceptional imagery systems of the authors immediately struck me. Hryhoriv showed an incredible sensitivity to music. He perceived one of my most radical works at the time so deeply that a day or two later, he brought me an essay-fantasy inspired by his impression of it. Unfortunately, this essay was lost in the swirl of KGB persecutions of that time, especially after Operation Block in 1972, with interrogations and arrests.”
“And It Will Be”
The cycle “And It Will Be” will be the first piece performed at the festival. Hrabovsky created it at the beginning of his stay in the United States. Together with a group of Ukrainian musicians in exile, he, in his own words, “found refuge” at the Ukrainian Institute of America (Manhattan). “Everyone worked diligently on solving the problem of professional integration into the artistic and concert life of New York,” Hrabovsky shares.
The work was commissioned by the New York-based new music ensemble Continuum. In addition to the ensemble’s performances, Hrabovsky’s music has been featured in composer concerts supported by the Ukrainian Institute of America and has also been performed at the Juilliard School. The premiere of “And It Will Be” took place in the year it was written in the United States.
The work is based on eight poems by Mykola Vorobiov.
“His creativity is rich with mysterious allusions, allegories, and descriptions of other worlds and universes, the existence of which the author was aware of. Some literary scholars consider this prominent poet of the Kyiv school of poetry to be ‘the Ukrainian folk surrealist.’ The works are taken from his book Supreme Voice. This is one of the strongest pieces in his oeuvre… I aimed to convey the spirit of his poetry through music, and I believe I succeeded,” the composer shares.
At the time of writing the cycle, Hrabovsky had already developed his method of algorithmic composition, which he had been using since the late 1960s and which remains a defining feature of his style to this day. However, in the vocal cycle, he did not resort to algorithms; instead, he applied sonoristic techniques, which he had been exploring in his work since the mid-1960s.
“The techniques I used were based on imagery associations generated by Vorobiov’s poetry. In ‘And It Will Be,’ rather simple aspects of the twelve-tone technique are employed (as in the first part). I combine them with a modal principle and moments of tonality. As for the sonoristic effects in the work, it is more a case of using refined coloristic techniques, adding specific synthesizer timbres, and playing on the strings of the piano,” the composer comments.
This year, the piece will be performed by the new music ensemble TAK. Hrabovsky revised the original score, adding a flute and expanding the percussion part.
“The performance of this work by the ensemble is a true collaboration between generations. The young, promising ensemble includes the music of a legendary composer (who is now in his 90s) in their repertoire. Moreover, it is an important cross-cultural collaboration. Despite the name, which is reminiscent of the Ukrainian word, TAK is not a Ukrainian ensemble. However, they are learning not only to perform the music of Ukrainian composers but also the Ukrainian language through Vorobiov’s poetry. This is the realization of our goals,” says Leah Batstone.
Here you can read about the piece “Pastels”, which will also be performed at the festival. Hrabovsky composed the work “Keepsake for Elissa” in exile in Moscow for Elissa Stutz, the wife of composer Virko Baley. This year, it will be performed by composer-keyboardist Forrest Eimold.
After a long break and having fully computerized his method of algorithmic composition, Leonid Hrabovsky continues to write music. However, most of the new works he has composed over the last decade have yet to be performed. Currently, concert programs primarily feature his early works. This is also the case for this year’s Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, which will present pieces written 60 and 30 years ago. One can only hope that, following this trend, Hrabovsky’s most recent compositions will soon be heard as well.
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