Olha Bekenshtein is a music curator and producer working with interdisciplinary arts. She is a co-founder of OK Projects, a nonprofit organization that brings together curators of contemporary art, music, and education. Olha is also a team member at the club and art center Closer in Kyiv. She initiated the Sound music lecture series at Closer, featuring discussions about prominent 20th-century musicians such as John Cage, Miles Davis, and many others. Olha also introduced the Light film lecture series and jazz evenings at Closer.
In addition, ten years ago, Olha founded the Am I Jazz? Festival of African American and improvisational music at Closer. The festival featured avant-garde jazz and experimental music. Itincluded concerts, lectures, film screenings, a series of “Q&A” events, as well as Closer’s signature late-night parties. Over the years, artists from various countries have performed at Am I Jazz?, including American singer Bilal, American composer and singer José James, German musician and producer Bernd Friedmann, French harpist and singer Laura Perrudin, Norwegian jazz musician Håkon Kornstad, and many others.
Olha is currently working on a new project, Time Based, which explores music and artistic practices centered around sound.
To learn more about Olha’s professional identity, project organizing experiences, and international collaborations, read her own story below.
Who am I?
Olha Bekenshtein: I always thought that I could answer the question of who I am quite simply: a cultural manager. This definition seemed obvious and accurate. However, I also liked the idea that people could invent their own professional roles. I’ve revisited these thoughtsmany times, and it seems to me now that the question “Who am I?” doesn’t have a single, definitive answer. I identify myself as a festival producer or music curator, depending on the project. Despite the interdisciplinary nature of my interests, most of my initiatives are still centered around music and sound. That’s my focus. However, I’ll admit that I haven’t come up with my own unique definition yet. Maybe I will find that definition in the future.
Am I Jazz?
The Am I Jazz? Festival launched in 2016 and has been held every year since 2019, though there was an online version of it due to COVID in 2020.
The idea for Am I Jazz? came to me by coincidence. At the time of its inception, I was organizing concerts of improvisational music, jazz, and my first international collaborations at Closer.The scene for the festival already existed and I was part of it.
One day, the Closer team (Ksyusha Malykh, Serhiy Yatsenko, and Tymur Basha) and I were giving an interview discussing our plans. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of organizing a festival at the time. Tymur suddenly said, “We’re going to have a jazz festival.” That phrase just hung in the air and in my head. I thought to myself: Well, okay, let’s do it. Why not?
The concept for the festival came together quite quickly. It appeared to me that there was nothing in Ukraine related to American music, especially to its contemporary and experimental parts. Of course, I realize now that a lot had already been known in Ukraine before I came along; I was just young and naive and genuinely believed I was the first to open that door.
The impulse back then was to create a festival that would showcase the various sides of American music for Ukrainians and build a new scene that was more urban, featuring nu-jazz, hip-hop, and experimental sounds.
I’ve never in my life listened to just one genre of music. On the contrary, I’ve always been someone who immerses themselves in different styles of music. I had no ambition to be a “jazz person”, even when I started organizing concerts. The Am I Jazz? Festival was genre-diverse from the start. It was never about “pure jazz”, and its programs included electronic music and improvisation from the first year.
However, the Am I Jazz? was widely perceived as a jazz festivalexternally. As a result, people automatically began to see me only in the context of jazz. That was a bit annoying since I feel confined when I am associated with just one niche. In any case, I continued working on the festival, and it developed and changed alongside me.
The next edition, Am I Jazz? 2022 was supposed to feature international performances and collaborations. However, I felt that it was no longer relevant to me at that point, that I had outgrown my own projects. Furthermore, the full-scale invasion changed everything.
Time Based
The Time Based project was a logical transformation of my work following the Am I Jazz? Festival. Time Based was my own initiative, and a response to the new challenges that emerged in 2022. The project had two main goals: to create music and audio-related art in various formats, and to foster international partnerships and collaborations.
I commissioned a new work for the first time during the COVID-era and quite liked that experience. Then I decided to restructure my work and focus more on commissions. I saw a new meaning in working with commissions.
From the start of my career, I felt it was important to maintain an international character in all my projects and brought international artists to Ukraine before the full-scale war. These musicians held concerts in Ukraine. I held many presentations about them, advocated for Black American Music, and discussed the roots of this music.
My work changed after 2022, as I began organizing international projects abroad. I strived to showcase contemporary Ukrainian music, specifically experimental music, not just “music played by Ukrainian artists.” The educational aspect of my work remained important for me. I also introduced competitions to my projects. That’s how the concept of the Time Based project took shape.
The first, still rather vague, idea for Time Based came to me during the pandemic. However, the initial organizing moves were made in 2023 and resulted in five American composers and sound artists working with five Ukrainian artists, whose main artistic medium or core practice was sound. Five new projects resulted. It wasn’t exactly a collaboration, but rather a partnership between American mentors and Ukrainian mentees. We presented their works in 2024.
At the same time, we collaborated with the influential American performance center ISSUE Project Room. Their team works with content is aesthetically similar to ours, i.e. interdisciplinary artistic projects, mostly centered around avant-garde music or sound art.
Three Ukrainian artists created three virtual/audiovisual works jointly with American artists in this collaborative project. There were It Feels Like the End of the Word by Eden Girma and Maryana Klochko, Time Zone Response by Oleksii Podat and Suzanne Thorpe, Labyrinth of Gazes by Madison Greenstone and Anton Saenko.
Another festival, the Time Based: Sonic Interventions Festival,took place in Glasgow in 2025, organized in partnership with the British creative production house Arts & Parts and its creative producer Martel Ollerenshaw.
This festival featured experimental music, sound art, and intercultural collaborations,bringing together Ukrainian and British artists. The Time Based: Sonic Interventions Festival explored sounds beyond humancontrol, from street noise to the sounds brought by war. All works presented at The Time Based: Sonic Interventions were commissioned for the festival.
Olha Bekenshtein: The program featured three concerts: a solo performance by Alla Zagaykevych, a collaboration between Ukrainian pianist and composer Yuriy Seredin and Scottish saxophonist Raymond McDonald, and a joint performance by audiovisual artist Xena Haspyd and Scottish composer and performance artist Genevieve Murphy.
Alla Zagaykevych’s piece was based on field recordings of bells from St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, St. Sophia Cathedral, and other Kyiv churches. This idea resonates deeply with me since in Berlin, where I live, there are incredibly beautiful bells. I’ve also attended carillon concerts a few timesin Berlin which I hadn’t heard before. The premiere of Alla Zagaykevych’s solo 8-channel performance, created for our festival, took place at the Glasgow Women’s Library. Alla Zagaykevych later performed the same music at the Bouquet Festival in Kyiv. It means a lot to me that this music continues to live beyond the scope of our project.
The music, created through a collaboration between Yuriy Seredin and Raymond McDonald, was written for an improvisational chamber ensemble. The same concert also featured a field recording made by musician and soldier Andriy Kokhan. The visual dimension of that program was enhanced by large-scale neon graphic scores by artist Douglas Gordon.
The joint performance by Scottish composer and performer Genevieve Murphy and Ukrainian experimental composer Alice Haspyd was created during a three-day residency in Glasgow and featured echoes of war, birdsong, and texts about the illusion of safety. Genevieve’s bagpipes played a special role, an instrument that historically accompanied military campaigns, served as a voice of support, a means of conveying orders, and even a weapon of psychological impact.
International collaborations
Olha Bekenshtein: My international collaborations have always had a few different aspects to them. The first has to do with education since I’ve always considered how projects I’ve initiated could create opportunities for Ukrainians, broaden their horizons, strengthen their professional communities, and introduce new approaches and practices to them.
The second aspect includes mutual exchanges and creations of horizontal connections between Ukrainian and foreign artists. Such collaborations weren’t top-down, or “we’ll teach you” types, but rather relationships between equals. Building these horizontal connections is not an easy task.
When people talk about the “international scene”, they often mean the “outside world”, as if we Ukrainians aren’t fully present on the international stage. Indeed, Ukrainians need to constantly articulate themselves, their perspectives, and their circumstances. Yet, it’s important that Ukraine isn’t known only in the context of war. Yes, we’re defending ourselves and our culture, and that’s fundamentally important. However, we can’t get stuck on trauma alone. There are life, ideas, meanings, and artistic experiences that exist alongside trauma in Ukraine. Ukrainians need to introduce those to the outside world.
A separate issue is the attitude of our international partners. Many of them are eager to mentor Ukrainian artists and cultural professionals, out of habit, as if Ukrainians are naturally “junior.” However, the value of collaborations lies not only in mentorship, since horizontal partnerships are also crucial.
There is a lot of work to be done by Ukrainians in explaining and defending their status as equals with international partners. The issue of integrating Ukrainian culture is complex andlayered.
We, Ukrainians, need to go beyond simply integrating into the international cultural landscape; we need to enter the international arena as a mature, strong, and recognizable entity, with our own perspective and voice.
The most valuable aspect of international partnerships is when someone from outside of Ukraine genuinely wants to understand Ukraine. There are people and organizations that try to make sense of Ukraine’s reality, its scene, and logic. It’s incredibly inspiring when I see something click for a foreigner right before my eyes. These are the moments when someone suddenly says, “Wait… is this Ukrainian? So that’s how it is over here? Aha!”You witness their realization and a shift in their perspective regarding Ukraine. Such moments are incredibly gratifying and reinforce the belief that we, Ukrainians, are moving in the right direction.
Another tremendous benefit arises when international projects not only happen but also gain a foothold. I arrange various commissions and collaborations and it’s incredibly rewarding when I see lasting connections forming between artists, not one-offs, but ones that continue without my involvement. It means that the ecosystem between Ukrainian and foreign artists is growing, and that trust and reciprocity are becoming a reality.
This material was created and published thanks to a grant from Music Export Ukraine, Canada-Ukraine Fund, Aid for Artists.
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