The Garden of Divine Songs

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Initiator and lead artist of our project

Opera singer, baritone Volodymyr Andrushchak, Ukraine

 

Graduated from the Lviv National Academy of Music in Ukraine in 2009. Studied early music interpretation at the K. Szymanowski Academy in Katowice, Poland, with a grant from “Gaude Polonia”. Graduated as a classical singer in Wroclaw, Poland from the K. Lipinski Academy of Music in 2017, and studied opera singing one year in Münich, Germany, at the Hochschule für musik und theater. Volodymyr has sung in various ensembles both as a soloist and as a member of the Ensemble. These include: A Capella Leopolis in Lviv, Ukraine, whose productions focus on Renaissance and Baroque music. Camerata Silesia in Katowice, Poland, whose productions focus on classical contemporary music. Cantores Minores in Wroclaw, Poland, whose productions focuse on early and contemporary music. Volodymyr’s opera repertoire includes Mozart’s operas Don Giovanni (Don Giovanni) and Figaro’s Wedding (Il Conte). Since 2017, Volodymyr has also performed and been the choir director in the ranks of the Polish Teatr Piesn Kozla, e.g. In San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing and London. He has been recording music e.g. Vikings Netflix series.

 

 

Composer Maciej Rychlu, Poland

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Composer, musician, psychologist, a founding member of the Kwartet Jorgi group, creates music based on European musical traditions. Maciej plays “shepards instruments”, most of which he has built himself.

Since 1985, he has devoted his know-how to rebuilding instruments found in archaeological excavations. Maciej has collaborated with several research centers such as: AMU in Poznan, the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw and the Institute of Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has worked closely with the Polish Folk Tradition Channel 2 and has worked as a composer and musician in countless theater productions, including the Gardzienice Theater Research Centre's productions from 1989-2004 and the Teatr Piesn Kozla Theater's internationally acclaimed productions from 2012-2022. Maciej has also been the composer of several individual theater, radio and film productions, the most recent being the Vikings-Netflix series, in which he also appears.
Maciej has been active as an international mouthpiece for folk music in Poland, serving as the artistic director of the Ethno Port Music Festival in Poznan since the early 1990s, and has also brought several Finnish folk music artists such as Kimmo Pohjonen and Maija Kauhanen to Poland.

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Musician Vsevolod Sadovyj, Ukraine

 

Vsevolod is a musician, multi-instrumentalist and seeker. Graduated from the Lviv Academy of Music as a musician and pedagogue, specializing in the teaching of wind and percussion instruments and as the conductor of a wind orchestra. In 2001, he began his career as a percussionist in the field of electronic, alternative music, e.g. in bands, Dejavue, Kirsowicherewizhchok, Kara, Infarct Focus, Dogma, AnnA and Godo. He has focused on researching and playing Ukrainian and European folk music in several different bands such as: Umerska, Ground Folk, Gardarica, Vita Norda, Lude dobry, Tatosh Banda and the Fidel Trio-Quartet. From 2004 Vsevolod's strong interest was in modal early music, which dates back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Europe. In collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Taras Drak, he did projects Vita Nova and Laterna Magica, which he will travel with for several years. In 2014, he returned to Lviv and founded the Lviv Music Factory / Lvivski Musiznyj Cekh, where he plays historical instruments and continues to study traditional instrumental techniques (Musica Radicum, Galeon). He studies and interprets the musical traditions of Ukrainians who have moved to North America with the Lemko Bluegrass Band and archaic Ukrainian folk music with the Kurbasy band at the Les Kurbas Theater. He performs in concerts, teaches music, lectures and directs workshops, and supports alternative music projects focusing on Ukrainian poetry (Hych Orchestra and Pyrig i Batig) Since 2020, he has studied free improvisation at MTET, SPHERES under Mark Tokar. His active collection of instruments includes more than 30 traditional percussion, wind, and string instruments. At the heart of his musical interest is archaic early and contemporary music and its ritual, modal and cyclical improvisations, as well as the therapeutic potential of music.

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Director Anu Almagro (Salonen), Finland

 

Anu graduated from the Department of Acting at the Manchester Metropolitan University in 2010 and at the University of Tampere in 2006. She followed her heart to learn and explore the craft and possibilities of the profound Eastern European physical and musical theatre practices to Poland. She has worked as an actor at the international Teatr Piesn Kozla Theater in Poland since 2007. Her works include performing Cordelia in “Songs of Lear”, Ofelia in “Hamlet- a Commentary” and Antigone in “Antigone Triptyk”.  Anu has performed with the internationally awarded theater, e.g. At BAM in New York and The Globe Theater in London, touring also around the UK, Europe, South and North America and Asia. The Finnish company Anu Almagro Actor Training Tmi has taken acting workshops abroad since 2012 throughout Europe all the way to the southern European cities and east to Bangkok. She works as a visiting lecturer of acting in Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Zürich and worked previously as a visiting lecturer in Manchester Metropolitan University.

Anu was the Artistic director of the international Odra Ensemble Theater Group, which acted on her initiative and under her leadership in Wroclaw, Poland from 2010-2013.

She is the Artistic director and founding member of the Winged Daughters Music Theater Group at the National Music Forum in Wroclaw.

Her latest directorial work, an international collaboration based on the life rigor of Joan of Arc; “Voices of Joan,” will be on display at the New Castle Theater Festival in Australia in 2022.

www.anualmagro.com

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