Alex Voytenko

Ukraine

Alex Voytenko is a composer and musicologist and lecturer at the R. Glier Kyiv Municipal Academy of Music, largely self-taught in composition. He graduated from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in 2002, studied composition at the National Music Academy of Ukraine under Yuri Ishchenko, and completed a Ph.D. in music theory there in 2010–2012 under Bogdan Syuta. A member of the National Composers’ Union of Ukraine, he is a composer of chamber and symphonic music and author of two monographs, including In Memoriam: Composer Volodymyr Zahortsev, on the life and works of one of Liatoshynsky’s students from the Kyiv Avant-Garde.

ChamberSymphonic

Performed at UCMF

GZI

UCMF 2023 · Evolutions · Mar 18 · 2009 · Chamber

Dedicated to Serhiy Pilyutikov; 2009, revised 2014

Performed by Catherine Gregory (Flute), Ford Fourqurean (Clarinet), Erika Dicker (Violin), Iva Casian-Lakos (Cello)

GZI was commissioned by the ensemble Ricochet (directed by Serhiy Pilyutikov) and premiered in April 2010 in Kyiv. “In ‘GZI’ I extended and developed the pitch material of my early ‘Intermezzo’ (2005) for cello and piano, so it has been transformed unrecognizably. The senseless letter combination ‘GZI’ was borrowed from a poem by Velimir Khlebnikov (1885–1922), ‘Bo-beh-o-bi’. The piece is written in extended ternary form with a da capo reprise.”

Watch on YouTube ↗

Homo Fugens (Running Man)

UCMF 2025 · Ukrainian Tone Poems · Mar 15 · 2018 · Piano · World premiere

World premiere; after Stephen King's The Running Man

Performed by Margarita Rovenskaya (Piano), Pavel Gintov (Piano)

Homo Fugens (Running Man) was written in 2018; its first version dates from 2014 (piano solo), the second from 2016 (two pianos, or one pianist playing two keyboards), in which the work was significantly expanded and a metronome added. A strict algorithmic composition using techniques from other Voytenko works, it is named after Stephen King’s novel The Running Man (1982, published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) and rethinks the idea of the constant, which causes a sense of stress, suffocation and incessant movement toward the end point — as the novel’s chapter titles descend, “MINUS 100 AND COUNTING”… to “MINUS 001 AND COUNTING,” “000.” The only plot parallel with King’s novel is the “explosion” at the end. The novel is set in 2025; the work is receiving its first performance.

Watch on YouTube ↗

Open in the interactive database →