Follow the Fellow #8

It’s been a year since I arrived in Berlin. If I had to leave it tomorrow, what would I take with me? The people, sure, the streets and roofs and cafés. The conversations, the fleeting sense of belonging.

But what would haunt me in my half-sleep? 
What would I remember even if I wished to forget?

fragments of furtive memories  
the spectral, the impalpable

the sharp ascending melody of a train departing from Ostkreuz one autumn morning
the rich bouquet of cigarette smoke, beer, and shots of Berliner Luft
the unexpectedly sublime taste of my first Schnittlauchbrezel at Schönhauser Allee
the local fruit brandy in a tiny basement that is ausland after an insane Stellari String Quartet concert
the walks with rats up and down the canals of Kreuzberg and Neukölln

the dimly lit evening sidewalks
wet, enwrapped in fog
and pregnant with guilt

the dark for which I have no name
“that magic feeling, nowhere to go”

~

Part of my fellowship was to update and expand the Contemporary Classical Music Portfolio UA, a curated selection of new music professionals from Ukraine by Kyiv Contemporary Music Days. It now has 68 profiles including composers, performers, organizers, ensembles, conductors, and media. I invite you to have a look at the Portfolio and browse through its profiles, as you won’t only learn some essential names in today’s new music scene of Ukraine but will also be able to listen to a lot (and I mean, a lot) of excellent music available for free.

If I must pick — almost at random because how else? — just one piece out of dozens and dozens featured in the Portfolio, let it be this one: Svyatoslav Lunyov’s Fierce January 23, a cycle of 35 songs on verses of Ukrainian poets for voice and piano. It showcases three brilliant artists from the Portfolio at once: Lunyov himself, soprano and conductor Viktoriia Vitrenko, and pianist Antonii Baryshevskyi. You’re in for a real treat:
 

»Follow the Fellow« is made possible as part of the Weltoffenes Berlin fellowship program of the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.