The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra and guest artists, with conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, center, in a recent performance at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
In Friday’s (6/9) Associated Press, Ronald Blum writes, “The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra will tour for the second straight summer, appearing in eight cities in Europe and Britain in support of the nation’s war effort against Russia. Keri-Lynn Wilson, the Canadian-Ukrainian wife of Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb, will conduct the tour, which runs from Aug. 20 to Sept. 3 and is being produced by the Met and the Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera. The Aug. 24 concert at Berlin’s Schönhausen Palace coincides with Ukrainian Independence Day and will be a free outdoor performance…. Musicians include members of the Kyiv National Opera, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra and Kharkiv Opera. Wilson said all but a dozen of the 74 musicians are holdovers from last summer…. The core of the orchestra lives in Ukraine. Four or five musicians have found positions with orchestras elsewhere in Europe. The principal second violin lost a brother in the war … ‘This is a wake-up call I would like to think to the Western World,’ Wilson said. ‘This is our message of continuing to fight this war, to galvanize the western world that we must stay together.’ ”
