My Journey to Canada to Participate in the Conductors Beyond Borders Programme
Oksana Sukhetska - Conductor, Ukraine
This journey is a unique opportunity for me to truly touch the Canadian musical soul through my own “touch” as a conductor—collaborating with the wonderful ensembles with whom I will have the joyful privilege and honor to create throughout my visit. First and foremost among them is Pro Coro Canada.
I am eager to share both my practical and theoretical experience generously with my professional colleagues and with singers—whether professionals or dedicated amateurs. At the same time, I await with excitement the creative encounters with renowned conductors Michael Zaugg and Lone Larsen. I am convinced that exchanges such as this have the power to open new possibilities and foster fresh perspectives. Building connections strengthens the shared development of our field as a whole.
Throughout my artistic and teaching career, I have traveled to many countries where generous colleagues introduced me to their approaches to training conductors and leading choirs. Everywhere, there is something valuable and unique to discover—something to adapt for one’s own ensemble and, more broadly, one’s educational system. For me, Canada is a completely new world. I am not yet deeply familiar with Canadian culture and I have never before met Canadian conductors or choirs. I am deeply curious to see your artistic and educational system from within. It is no secret that the entire world admires Canadian society. In Ukraine, we seek to learn from your educational approaches. I sincerely wish to better understand how you cultivate the artistic dimension of life and to bring this experience home, to enrich Ukrainian society.
“Having the joyful opportunity to collaborate with the brilliant ensemble under Maestro Michael Zaugg, I will also be able to present not only Ukrainian music but works of global significance”
I am also very much looking forward to meeting young, aspiring conductors. Working with students—our future colleagues—is my personal passion: to pass on experience, to inspire creativity, to nurture a deep and sincere love for choral art, to cultivate the ability to give birth to unique interpretations, and to bring genuine, heartfelt performance to audiences. And the greatest joy of all is giving to the singers themselves. For the catharsis that a musician experiences on stage is something only the artist can live—and it is a profound gift for us.
Photo: Sukhetska with Ukraine’s Youth Chamber Choir
Along with my knowledge and experience, I am bringing with me works by Ukrainian composers. Among them, I will highlight a choral piece by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak. Living in western Ukraine, she continues to create beautiful music even during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Remarkably, though her body of work is largely instrumental, she possesses a deep sensitivity to that most perfect instrument—the human voice. She creates exquisite choral works that are widely performed by ensembles in Ukraine and abroad. Few people know that Bohdana Frolyak is the sister of Hanna Havrylets, the distinguished Ukrainian choral composer who, sadly, passed away in the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022. With the Kappella Kyrie Slavic Chamber Choir (dir. Melanie Turgeon), we will work on Hanna Havrylets’s music. The rare artistic talent shared by the Frolyak sisters is truly unique, and may well be considered their family’s artistic legacy.
Image Source: Risør kammermusikkfest
The work by Bohdana Frolyak that I am bringing is an excerpt from her large-scale symphonic requiem Pravednaya dushe (Righteous Soul)—an episode from the third movement entitled Shevchenko’s Paradise. This movement offers a radiant vision of Ukraine, in contrast to the tragedy of the preceding sections. And it is precisely in this enlightened way that I wish to present Ukraine to the local community.
Having the joyful opportunity to collaborate with the brilliant ensemble under Maestro Michael Zaugg, I will also be able to present not only Ukrainian music but works of global significance: The Angel by Tina Andersson and What We Sow by Joel Lindberg. Even in the process of preparing these scores on my own, I found them to be revelations and a source of deep admiration—well before we bring them to life together in rehearsal with Pro Coro Canada and on stage in concert. I believe we will be able to offer each other, and our audiences, a memorable and meaningful artistic experience.
During the rehearsal process, I will have the honor of sharing the approaches of the Odesa choral school, one of Ukraine’s leading traditions, founded by the esteemed Kostiantyn Pihrov, the teacher of my professor Alisa Serebri, with whom I studied conducting for seven years. I also had the privilege of further studies at the Kyiv Conservatory, in the class of Yevhen Savchuk, and thus naturally draw as well on the traditions of the great Kyiv choral school, founded by Pavlo Muravskyi. I still remember attending rehearsals led by Muravskyi himself, when, as a student at music college, I traveled to the conservatory to acquaint myself with its programs before admission.
I await with great anticipation my encounter with Canada and its remarkable people—above all, my respected colleagues. I sincerely believe that this visit will be fruitful for both sides.
My heartfelt thanks go to Michael Zaugg and Pro Coro Canada for their invitation, and to the International Federation for Choral Music (Nadine Robin) and their programme Conductors Beyond Borders and the UN, the Ukrainian Millenium Foundation, the Ukrainian Dnipro Ensemble of Edmonton (dir. Irena Szmihelsky) and Kappella Kyrie Slavic Chamber Choir (dir. Melanie Turgeon) for their support.
