Musicians from the “Drum Factory” conduct percussion lessons for migrant children in Odesa. The studies will last six months, and after the end of the classes there will be a concert. The journalists of Sospilny learned the details.
Children aged 6 to 13 can attend classes. Currently, free lessons are held only for displaced persons, and in the future they plan to recruit a group of children from Odesa, who witnessed rocket attacks.
Now, every Sunday, a group of eight children practice playing the drums for two hours. The children moved to Odesa from different regions of Ukraine: Mykolaiv, Kherson and Donetsk.
Odesa musicians teach immigrant children to play drums
Society Odesa
“There was no banging at all, and then they started banging sharply, but everything was fine, the sirens were just working there. And then we thought that the corridor would save us, we hid there. And it banged so hard, our window below there flew out. Dad was at work then, he called us and told us to leave,” says 9-year-old Matvii Sakhno from Avdiivka.
His cousin, 11-year-old Maria Shehavtsova, always wanted to play the drums:
“We were registering for humanitarian aid, and now we were registering for English. And now they call us and say, do you want to sign up for the drums? I wanted to do music for a long time, I went there for vocals, but it turned out that there was a war, and I didn’t have I tried to play the drums with my uncle there in Avdiivka, I knew how to play quite a bit. And I always wanted to play the drums, because I like it.”
Odesa musicians teach immigrant children to play drums
Maria Shehavtsova, a migrant. Society Odesa
Two hours of classes are enough to teach children the basics of playing the drums, says teacher Yevhen Hlushchenko:
“The children first learn only the basic rhythms so that their hands get used to them, then we add various transitions between the rhythms so that they understand how to do it, and then we carefully combine all this and, of course, fix it with songs.”
“The only goal is to distract the children from the chaos they had to go through. I won’t even talk about funding, they lost a lot, their parents lost a lot, so we help free of charge with what we can help. Some help with music, some help with money, some others something,” said Elnur Rustamov, founder of the Drum Factory school.
“Velvet season” has started: in Odessa
The premiere of the new Ukrainian opera “Kateryna” based on the work of the same name by Taras Shevchenko took place at the Odesa National Theater of Opera and Ballet. The opera opened the annual theater festival “Velvet Season”. The correspondent of Suspilno learned about how the premiere went and the audience’s impressions.
The main role of Kateryna was played by Yuliya Tereshchuk, and Oleksandr Prokopovych played the Muscovite Ivan.
“Against everything, the premiere took place. Despite the war, despite the worries, despite the insufficient number of rehearsals, because it is a difficult time. We work in a really cool theater and this premiere took place thanks to an extremely talented team. We are happy that it happened today, that the premiere The era of Oleksandr Rodin’s “Kateryna” took place and we hope that it will become a new stage in Ukrainian world culture,” said the performer of the role of Kateryna, Yuliya Tereshchuk.
“To play a Muscovite, the main difficulty is the present. And that’s all. You can’t say more, again, I understand that this is a negative character, and it was interesting how our audience would accept us. That’s the Muscovite. The composer wrote so much good music, it was very difficult to play a negative character, you had to go through yourself,” Oleksandr Prokopovich, who played the Muscovite, shared with Suspilny.
The Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko came to Odesa especially for the premiere. He noted that such events are part of the “cultural front”:
“Actually, we keep our cultural front, because it’s no secret that the Russians call the export of their culture a special operation. On the other hand, life goes on and for people who are in peaceful cities, it’s important to feel the taste of real life. And culture is not just an opportunity to reboot is a belief in our victory and a sign that everything will be in us – culture.”
The correspondent also inquired about the audience’s impression of the opera.
“I was thinking how it is possible to express what Shevchenko created with an opera – it is possible. It is very, very beautiful, it is simply incredible. It is a great impression,” said the viewer Olena.
“Here is a combination, here is not just one plot from Kateryna, very large genre scenes are taken here, which give mood, give symbolism. This is its strength, this production. This is not just one human plot, this is a large, very broad picture of Ukrainian life. This today it is very important and very necessary,” said the viewer Vasyl Navrotskyi.