Ukrainianb. 1981 · Ukraine
Maxim Kolomiiets (b. 1981, Kyiv) trained in oboe and composition at the National Music Academy of Ukraine, graduating in 2009, and later studied composition under Johannes Schöllhorn at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He is a solo oboist with the Ukho contemporary music ensemble and the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, co-founder of Ensemble Nostri Temporis, and founder of the baroque-music Luna Ensemble. In 2023 the Metropolitan Opera commissioned him to write an opera about abducted Ukrainian children. He is a winner of the Gradus ad Parnassum and Step to the Left national competitions and took third prize at the Vareler Komponistenpreis, and is co-founder and curator of the KORA Art-Cube art space.
for oboe and piano
Performed by Rita Mitsel (Oboe), Yuliya Basis (Piano)
Like silver drops, your words, which I do not hear. Tear the frosty emptiness of their echo that silently moves away, without looking back, quickly, inviting to follow it. Almost grasped, almost heard, almost you. This boundless world built from your words which, apparently, were not even there.
dedicated to Pierre Boulez for his 90th birthday
Performed by NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble (Ensemble), Allison Philips (Trumpet), Emma Reber (French horn)
Vinyl Snails by Maxim Kolomiiets was commissioned by the Ukho Ensemble and dedicated to Pierre Boulez for his 90th birthday. “My idea was to write a dedication piece, an allusion piece, using the instrumental composition of his Dérive. The work was not too serious, because I wanted to combine in it the seriousness of the approach to working with Boulez’s material and my respectful but at the same time free and in some way ironic attitude to his work. It is a kind of listening to old, childhood-familiar records, with post-romantic and post-serial music at the same time — with the fact that the plate is constantly buzzing and crashing back to the beginning, giving the same warmed-up melodies of modern color.”
Performed by Harmony Chiang (Viola), Victoria Lin (Cello), Joyce Zhu (Flute), Marilyn Farias (Clarinet), Riley Palmer (Trombone), Joyce Li Yu (Piano), Jacky Xu (Percussion), Natalie North (Percussion), Abigail Rodriguez (Percussion), Grace Sprecher (Percussion), AJ Morrissey (Percussion), Iwo Jedynecki (Accordion), NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble (Ensemble), Jonathan Hass (Conductor)
“The piece I wrote is called ‘Footprints on the Sun.’ This is something impossible, because we don’t know how to leave footprints on the sun. And yet that’s what we try to do every day. We try to leave a memory of ourselves, to prolong ourselves in history with some kind of ‘footprint on the sun.’ And many of us, if not all of us, who attempt this will likely be burned by that sun. But despite this, we continue to try. This piece is about the feeling of the impossible — about feeling fragile and all-consuming fire at the same time. It’s about overcoming yourself and going beyond the imaginary.”
