PROLEGOMENA TO AN OPERA: SONGS FOR KYIV-MOHYLA ACADEMY

Prolegomena to an Opera: Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academyrevives the musical life of one of Eastern Europe’s oldest academic institutions, founded in 1632, through a contemporary chamber song cycle conceived as a draft for a future opera.

Commissioned by Faktura 10, a core initiative of RIBBON International, and curated by Marta Kuzma, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of Faktura 10, the music is composed by Maxim Kolomiiets, with concept and texts by Sasha Andrusyk, and performed by Ukho Ensemble Kyiv & friends with conductor Olga Prykhodko. Scenography by Katya Libkind.

The project unfolds in dialogue with Untitled, 1997/2025 by Jannis Kounellis, a seminal work first realized nearly three decades ago and, in June, reinstalled on the ground floor of the Old Academic Building of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy as curated by Marta Kuzma and as a central project of Faktura 10.

The project draws directly from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s storied history. While the official curriculum emphasized theology, philosophy and classical languages, music occupied an informal yet crucial place in its scholastic life. This is articulated in Ivan Kuzminsky’s research into historical music practices at the Academy, which served as the basis for Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Building on his findings, Sasha Andrusyk developed the project as both a historical inquiry and a creative response — reimagining how music, singing, and choir might have shaped the intellectual and emotional life of the early eighteenth-century institution. In this period, multivoiced partesniy spiv (part singing) matured into the choral concerto—a distinct Ukrainian Baroque polyphonic form, noted for its expressive breadth and structural clarity.

The cycle has a seven-part structure, each drawn from historical situations that reveal how song was embedded into student life and the ceremonial rituals of the early 1700s. At the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, choirs and musical ensembles served not only as vehicles of worship but also as tools of education, rhetorical training, and social bonding. The episodes range from liturgical and disputational settings—where choral singing functioned as an extension of scholarly debate—to drinking songs, begging-for-alms cantos, and farewell laments performed at student gatherings and funerals. The performance includes nine instruments alongside three vocalists: Denys Sahirov (tenor), Ruslan Kirsh (baritone), and Kostiantyn Lenchyk (bass).

The production features scenography by Kyiv-based artist Katya Libkind, developed in dialogue with the Songs for Kyiv-Mohyla Academy libretto and in collaboration with artist Stanislav Turina. Libkind draws on the architectural memory of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy—specifically the renovation and near-erasure of the eighteenth-century congregation hall ceiling—to reflect on what has been lost, forgotten, or left unrealized. Her scenographic design embraces absence as a generative space where memory, imagination, and renewal converge. Turina’s contribution, Чаші для милостині (Alms Bowls), consisting of thirty hand-crafted bowls, echoes the Academy’s historical tradition of student alms-seeking.

Participant Bios

Sasha Andrusyk

Sasha Andrusyk is the co-founder and head curator of Ukho, a group that has been at the forefront of presenting contemporary classical and experimental music in Ukraine for over a decade. Ukho explores the audiovisual situation, examining how each concert or intervention reshapes the relationship between sound, space, and perception. Andrusyk's work spans diverse listening formats, including chamber concerts, site-specific performances, audiovisual installations, and contemporary opera. In 2021, she received the Shevchenko Prize for curating and producing the Architecture of Voice cycle, reflecting her interest in urban environments, memory, and gesture. A founding member of Plivkaand Pavilion of Culture collectives, she is now launching Kyiv Dispatch, a record label documenting and amplifying Ukraine’s new music landscape.

Maxim Kolomiiets

Maxim Kolomiiets is a Ukrainian composer, oboist, and conductor, and a founding member of Ensemble Nostri Temporis and Ukho Ensemble Kyiv. His music combines early music traditions, archival research, and experimental practices, often engaging with historical memory and phenomenological approaches to sound. Kolomiiets’s works have been performed at Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Darmstadt, Donaueschinger Musiktage, and Warsaw Autumn. In 2023, he was commissioned by the Metropolitan Operaand Lincoln Center Theater’s New Works Program to compose The Mothers of Kherson—an opera with librettist George Brant about Ukrainian mothers who rescued children abducted during the war, scheduled to debut at the Met in April 2028. Kolomiiets is also the author of two earlier operas, Espenbaum and Night.

Olga Prykhodko

Olga Prykhodko is a Ukrainian conductor, vocalist, and musicologist specializing in 20th–21st century music. She is the founder and artistic director of Alter Ratio, the vocal ensemble she has led for fifteen years, bringing to life international projects in partnership with institutions such as the Goethe-Institut, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, SWR, The House Foundation for the Arts/Meredith Monk, Pro Helvetia, the British Council, and the Österreichisches Kulturforum Kiew, among many others. As a guest conductor, she has worked with the RIAS Kammerchor and Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in Germany, as well as the Liatoshynskyi Capella in Kyiv. Her work has been supported by the Weltoffenes Berlin program, the Noël Minet Fund, and the Scholarship of the President of Ukraine. She has taken part in masterclasses and competitions in Austria, Spain, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and France.

Ukho Ensemble Kyiv

Ukho Ensemble Kyiv is a group of seventeen Ukrainian soloists dedicated to performing new music. Co-founded in 2015 by conductor Luigi Gaggero and Ukho Agency, a Kyiv-based curatorial group specializing in experimental music and contemporary art, the ensemble embraces a phenomenological approach to music, rooted in the concept of lived time. By 2025, its program encompassed over 200 works, from twentieth-century composers such as Morton Feldman, György Ligeti, and Valentin Silvestrov to contemporary composers, including Andreyev and Saunders. The ensemble has performed operas by Sciarrino, Gervasoni, and Cella for the National Opera of Ukraine and collaborated with soloists such as Mario Caroli, Marino Formenti, Michael Taylor, and Frank Wörner. In 2025, it released a recording of Gérard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum on Kyiv Dispatch, receiving strong international press for the depth and clarity of its interpretation. Ukho Ensemble has also released albums on Winter & Winter, Kairos, and EMA Vinci, and counts composers Maxim Kolomiiets and Ihor Zavhorodnii among its founding members.

Ruslan Kirsh

Ruslan Kirsh graduated from the National Music Academy of Ukraine in 2008 with a degree in choral conducting and is currently a postgraduate student at the Academy’s Department of Ancient Music. He is the co-founder of Nova Opera, a company that has worked in contemporary musical theatre for over a decade and has received numerous awards in Ukraine and abroad. For more than ten years, he has collaborated with the Alter Ratioensemble. He is also the founder of the IGNEA KORDA NGO, which has produced a range of interdisciplinary and international cultural projects. His work combines performance, research, and production.

Denys Sahirov

Denys Sahirov is a tenor, a member of the Liatoshynskyi Capella, and a soloist with the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, he studied at the Stritivka School of Kobzar Art and the National Music Academy of Ukraine. He has sung solo parts in works by Bach, Mozart, Handel, Ramirez, and others, and has performed with ensembles including the Credo Chamber Choir, the Partes Early Music Ensemble, and Alter Ratio. In 2024, he joined Andreas Scholl’s Baroque music masterclass and appeared in Carl Orff’s Trionfi at the Hamburg State Opera. In 2025, he performed in the world premiere of a cantata by Jörg Widmann with Kent Nagano at the Elbphilharmonie.

Kostiantyn Lenchyk

Born in Chernihiv, Kostiantyn Lenchyk graduated from the Chernihiv Music College with a degree in choral conducting and continued his education at the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music, completing bachelor’s, master’s, and assistantship/internship programs. From 2017 to 2022, he was a member of the Kyiv Chamber Choir and is currently a vocalist with the National House of Music. Lenchyk specializes in choral and ensemble performance.

Katya Libkind

Artist and set designer based in Kyiv, working across installation, video, and scenography. A graduate of the Kyiv National Academy of Fine Arts and co-founder of atelienormalno, a workshop for artists with and without Down syndrome. Her scenographic work has been featured in performances produced by Ukho Agency.