Arts & Events

On Sunday afternoon June 12, from 2:30-3:30, Berkeley residents will have the rare opportunity to hear the music and poetry of Ukrainian culture voiced by some of the Bay Area's best choral singers and most celebrated actors: Peter Callender, Joy Carlin, and Patrick Russell. They will also be joined by the beloved vielle-player Shira Kammen.  

The event, called "Echoes from Ukraine" at Hertz Hall on the Cal campus, will be led by the well-known choral director Marika Kuzma. As part of the Berkeley Festival of Early Music, the concert will include music from the 12th century up through the 19th, but with a twist. The musical numbers will be interwoven with modern poetry, one of the poems written just last month. There will be visual images of the Ukrainian countryside as well. Kuzma calls it choral theater. 

"Everyone around the world has been witnessing the horrors of the current war but few know how rich and diverse this culture is, and how far back it goes," she says. "Now we're seeing only images of destruction. Its landscape is gorgeous, as varied as California." 

Professor Emerita of Cal's music department, Marika Kuzma directed its choirs for some 25 years. Some of the singers in this concert even traveled with her to Ukraine years ago. She is an expert in Ukrainian choral music and has given talks around the world. Just last week, she took part in a zoom conference with colleagues in Kyiv and Lviv 

"The powerful music and poems in our concert by themselves refute all propaganda that this distinct culture didn't and doesn't exist. Musicians In Ukraine were oppressed in so many ways for centur> ies, but the music survives. These people are so resilient in part because they sing," she says. 

To usher in the concert, Cal's carillonist Jeff Davis will play Ukrainian songs and authentic bell-sounds starting at 2. "We're going to let the voices of Ukraine ring and echo around town,"Kuzma says. 

The concert will be immersive and brief. Those in the audience can still catch the Beethoven 9 concert or the Vox luminis concert happening downhill at 4.  

For tickets: