Alla Zahaykevych is a Ukrainian composer, performance artist, and musicologist. She graduated from the Kyiv State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (1990) and attended IRCAM in Paris for composition and musical informatics (1995–96). From 1998 she has lectured at the Music Information Technologies Department of the National Music Academy of Ukraine, where she founded the Electronic Music Studio. She has served as Artistic Director of the Electroacoustic Ensemble since 2009 and President of the Electroacoustic Music Association of Ukraine since 2010, and directs the international projects Electroacoustics (Kyiv, since 2003) and EM-VISIA (from 2005). In 2004 she received the Oleksandr Dovzhenko State Award of Ukraine for her music for the film MAMAY, and she was a member of the folklore Ensemble “Drevo” of the National Music Academy of Ukraine (1986–1999).
OrchestralElectro-acousticMultimediaFilm Score
Awards
Oleksandr Dovzhenko State Award of Ukraine (2004), for the film MAMAY
for viola, accordion and clarinet with video; texts by Brecht and Zhadan
Performed by Lavinia Pavlish (Viola), Lucie Vítková (Accordion), Madison Greenstone (Clarinet), Gleb Kanasevich (Live sound)
Punctum Reditum was written for the Ensemble Megaphon’s project “History of the Soldier” (2016) and dedicated to soldiers returning from war. How do we find a “point of return” — a Punctum Reditum — from “bad times”, Wars, Roads, Dreams…? The work is inspired by the poetry from Bertolt Brecht’s German War Primer (Svendborger Gedichte) and from Serhiy Zhadan’s Life of Maria (Життя Марії). Excerpts are used in the accompanying video made by Waldemart Klyuzko.
electroacoustic, from sketches for the film “Guide” (2013)
Performed by Alla Zahaykevych (Electronics)
This electroacoustic work focuses on the transformation process of the voice during cross-synthesis with various nature sounds. The material for the piece began from sketches for the music for the film Guide (director A. Sanin, 2013), whose main character is a blind musician, a kobzar. The music creates a special sense of heightened hearing as hearing was the main guide throughout the film.
Performed by Sean Statser (Live percussion), Iryna Klymenko (Voice), Serhiy Okhrimchuk (Violin), Gleb Kanasevich (Live electronics)
In 1986, the folk singer Iryna Klymenko and the composer Alla Zahaykevych came to the village Stari Koni (Old Horses), in the Zarichnensky district of Rivne region, to research folklore; this field trip can be considered the beginning of Nord/Ouest. Originally, the work was a “geo-poetical” project by the Electroacoustic Ensemble, consisting of Alla Zahaykevych (composition, programming, live electronics, voice and theremin), Iryna Klymenko (voice), Sergiy Okhrimchuk (violin, voice) and Vadim Jovich (percussion). This composition focuses on the primitive mystery and apparent elusiveness of the folklore of the Northwestern region of Ukraine, and on its free and at the same time structured nature. Following the French philosopher Guy Debord (1931–1994), for whom the cultural vector is Northwest, Zahaykevych interprets the idea as “not so much a natural dissemination of culture as a rapt listening to sounds and signs of Nord/Ouest.” The structural method is based on creating an original heterophonic ensemble, combining electronic and instrumental means with folklore material. The piece was commissioned by the Second Festival of Traditional and Avant-Garde Music KODY (Lublin, Poland).
Performed by Gleb Kanasevich (Clarinet), Johnna Wu (Violin), Clare Monfredo (Cello)
“In this work it was important for me to bring the musical material maximally close to an imaginary ‘vocal’ sounding, and to provoke the type of sensitivity of reactions of all elements of the musical texture that is mainly found in vocal ensembles. An important element of the structural construction is the ‘modulation of tonality’ in its last third, where spectral harmony (‘ring-modulation’ on the basis of the work’s basic chords) appears, ‘shaking loose’ and ‘freeing’ the language of the work and creating the effect of a certain ‘gravity field.’ The idea of Tercet has a connection with a ‘musical appearance’ from the story ‘Nekropolis’ by the modern Ukrainian writer T. Prokhasko, where the musicians of a little orchestra rise up onto an air bullet in the sky… They played there, and it was the best concert of them all.”
