In the podcast interview with Keri-Lynn Wilson, it immediately becomes clear that active solidarity with Ukraine is her life and that the UFO is a project very close to her heart. She calls one close relative in Ukraine three times a day to make sure she always knows the latest. Ideally, she would have wanted to mark the anniversary of the invasion with a UFO concert in Kyiv, but that was logistically difficult and too great a risk for some of the musicians. However, Keri-Lynn Wilson was in Ukraine two days before the historic date, conducting Verdi’s Messa di Requiem in the Lviv Opera House in honour of the fallen Ukrainian soldiers. She was joined by a cast of soloists and the choir and orchestra of Lviv Opera.
One of that orchestra’s musicians is the violinist Anna Bura. She is also a member of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, and she talks in the podcast about day-to-day life in Lviv at a time of war. She also reveals why the concert in the Elbphilharmonie in August 2022 was so important for her and perhaps also for the entire orchestra.
About the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra
When Keri-Lynn Wilson, the internationally sought-after Canadian-Ukrainian conductor, formed the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra (UFO) in spring 2022, it was almost an act of artistic self-defence. A reflexive response to the Russian army’s invasion of its neighbouring country. Wilson refused to passively watch this injustice play out, she would answer with a clear message: Ukraine’s (musical) culture lives on despite, and because of, this aggression – it cannot be suppressed or destroyed.
More than 70 musicians answered Wilson’s call, all of them instrumentalists from Ukraine, many of them already in exile. And in summer 2022, she took her ad-hoc symphony orchestra to ten cities in Europe and the USA with a joint production by the Met in New York and the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw. The concert in the Elbphilharmonie on 13 August 2022 was unforgettable. The UFO is now back together again, rehearsing in Warsaw for two weeks in preparation for a European tour that will see them returning to the Elbphilharmonie on 30 August (the concert is already sold out).
