The Great Ukrainian Songbook project has unveiled its first full-length LP, ‘KARABYTS’ — a reinterpretation of the song-based works of Ukrainian academic composer Ivan Karabyts (1945–2002). The album features nine tracks, with the symphonic elements performed by the National Ensemble of Soloists ‘Kyiv Camerata’ and the jazz component led by the Dennis Adu Quartet
The Great Ukrainian Songbook team recorded ‘KARABYTS’ as a ‘bold dialogue between eras’, bringing together Karabyts’s academic music with Ukrainian poetry spanning from neoclassicism to the present day. The album features texts such as ‘Za rikoiu tilky vyshni’, ‘Maty nasha syvaia horlytsia’, ‘Yak upav zhe vin’ by Borys Oliinyk, ‘Koly polynut bryhantyny’, ‘Yabluka dospily’ by Maksym Rylskyi, and ‘Maty-y-machukha’ by Diana Kot.
The track ‘Za rikoiu tilky vyshni’ was also translated and recorded in English.
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‘I have performed these songs many times at philharmonic concerts and felt that they belong to the canon of The Great Ukrainian Songbook, — Mariana Holovko, the project’s founder and vocalist, says. — They are deeply meaningful and distinctive thanks to the unique combination of the profound lyricism of Ukrainian poets and Karabyts’s brilliant talent. It seemed to me that today these works are less known than they deserve to be. Our project aims to bring this important musical heritage to a wider audience, and we will do everything we can to achieve that’.
‘KARABYTS’ was arranged by composer and musician Usein Bekirov. The album will be released on Apple Music and Spotify soon.
More about The Great Ukrainian Songbook
The Great Ukrainian Songbook is a platform dedicated to revitalizing the song heritage of Ukrainian composers — both men and women. Its team uncovers works that were excluded from the official canon, restoring their voices within the contemporary soundscape. The project was founded by Mariana Holovko, a multi-genre artist and a soloist of Nova Opera.
In August, the platform released a reimagined version of the track ‘Z yakoi ty pisni?’, originally from 1968. The music was composed by Yakiv Lapynskyi, with lyrics written by poet Valentyna Naumenko.
Specifically for the new version of the track, a music video was created based on archival Kyiv newsreels from the 1960s. Holovko and her team found the Kyiv footage at the State Cinema, Photo and Phono Archive named after Hordii Semenovych Pshenychnyi. Most of these materials had not previously been shown to the public.
The video was directed by documentary filmmaker Stanislava Doronchenko.
The recording featured Dennis Adu, pianist Rodion Ivanov, drummer Pavlo Halytskyi, and double bassist Maksym Hladetskyi. The orchestral arrangement was created by Yevhen Braha.
‘This is a work by an underrated Ukrainian composer who is almost never spoken about. At the same time, the song carries a palpable desire to break free from the constraints of the Soviet era, while Valentyna Naumenko’s poetry adds tenderness and lyrical beauty. The meaning and spirit of this composition perfectly convey our idea — to revive voices that deserve a new life’, Holovko commented on the release.
The video ‘Z yakoi ty pisni?’ was available to watch in exchange for a donation of 68 hryvnias. All proceeds were donated to the ‘Ptakhy’ foundation run by Tata Kepler to purchase rare antibiotics for Ukrainian service members.
