Shchedryk Children's Choir Kyiv singing Giya Kancheli (Text Part I - see description) - Video

This text is an excerpt from an article published in the Danish newspaper Zetland:

"Almost magical."

A children's choir from Kyiv asked us to send their last songs out into the world
For decades, a renowned children's choir in Ukraine has been creating hope. Then they were hit by war. Here's their response.

Listen. Try listening to the song. This is not the kind of story we usually do at Zetland. It's a story best told with music. Because it's about music - about music as a source of hope in a war. About a struggle now to get that music out into the world. So instead of reading, I recommend you listen. Just press the play button.

There is a children's choir in Kyiv called Shchedryk. It is Ukraine's only professional children's choir and they have won several awards around the world. The choir has performed in Canada, USA, Sweden and yes, in both Russia and Ukraine. When they perform, the children are dressed in white and black, the girls wear braids, and as they sing, they sway back and forth to the music.

This year, the choir had planned a major tour of the world to celebrate its 50th birthday.

But then came the war.

Saul Zaks is a Danish-Argentinian-Israeli conductor who is the artistic director of an important youth music festival in Vienna. He remembers clearly the first time he saw the choir perform some years ago. "Well, now I get emotional. Now I'm really touched. These are very young people, but they have a singing technique that is completely unique," he says.

"Suddenly, when they open their mouths and their sound comes out you wouldn't believe it coming from these kids. Because it's such a mature sound, so unpolished. It's a warm sound. It's from another planet," Saul says. "How do you put sound into words? Fantastic is too little to say, it's almost magical."

On February 24, Russia's invasion put an end to the choir's plans to record a lot of music and travel the world on their 50th anniversary tour. Ukraine was under attack. And the children and their families were scattered. Some children fled. Others sought shelter in their homes.

"We had many plans," explains the choir's leader. "Now we live in another dimension."

When Saul Zaks heard about the invasion, he decided to do something. "I thought: 'The adults are going out to fight. The kids just have to come out of Kyiv,'" he recalls. Quickly, through a conductor contact in Poland, he organised a bus with 59 seats. It could go to Ukraine and take them to Denmark.

"At the border between Ukraine and Poland we would wait with blankets, food and everything they needed. And then the bus would drive quietly to Denmark." Saul Zaks began planning accommodation at a school in Aarhus, where he lives.

But then he heard from the leader of the Shchedryk choir. "She wrote that the children were already scattered all over Kyiv. They couldn't rehearse. She couldn't see that it could be done." It was impossible to get the children or their families out.

(...)

But then they had another idea: What if - when they couldn't sing together or go out into the world together or just escape together - they could send some music out into the world?

The choir had managed to record two songs in St Andrew's Church in Kyiv before the war made it impossible. They were two lullabies. The leader of the children's choir asked Saul Zaks if he would take on the responsibility of trying to get the songs out into the world. He did.

He then phoned our newspaper Zetland and sent them the two songs.

"I don't understand Ukrainian, but when you listen to their songs, it's like it all makes sense on the highest level," says Saul Zaks. "That's why I sent the songs. Because then any person can empathise with those notes and find their own description of what they're feeling. What this music does to each one of us is quite unique."

The sheet music for the lullabies was also lost. But Marianna Sablina, the choir's conductor, rewrote them by hand during the war. "She sent me a handwritten score from a bunker in Kyiv," says Saul Zaks.

I wanted to talk to the children from the choir. It has been impossible, because they are on the run or seeking shelter in apartments, cellars and bunkers. I would have liked to talk to the conductor of the choir. It's been impossible because she's looking after her parents. I would have liked to talk to the director of the choir, Tanya. She replies by email: 'Living with the threat of bomb attacks, we are always busy. Because we can only plan one day ahead. If we wake up tomorrow. We have a different sense of time now. We work on the things that are urgent in our lives. Because everyone knows that people and children die in wars."

That's why there's no time to talk. We only have the music and the story they have sent. So let's get on with it.

(to be continued in second video - Youtube limits the text)

photo credits: Sergii Mamin