Homage to Ukraine | Karen Bentley Pollick & Ludmila Yurina
Date:
Thu, 09/29/2022 - 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Event Type:
Concert 
FREE and Open to the Public | Registration for in-person attendance | Livestream
Face coverings are strongly recommended. We encourage you to continue wearing masks for the comfort of our audience members, artists, and staff.
For more information please visit CCRMA's COVID-19 Policies and the COVID-19 safety protocols for Department of Music events.
Ukrainian composer/pianist Ludmila Yurina arrived in Palo Alto in mid March 2022 from Kyiv, where she met Karen Bentley Pollick in June 2018. Their first collaboration features two new works for solo violin composed by Ludmila in Palo Alto and at the studio of Stanford University's CCRMA. DUMA is dedicated to the Ukrainian defenders. "Distant Lands" is for violin & electronics, with sounds recorded in the wagon of the Lviv-Warsaw refugee train, and prayers for the children of Ukraine.
Karen Bentley Pollick spent most of the pandemic in San Pancho, Nayarit where she experimented with vocal sounds and mermaid songs in her pool to depict the angst of the animals responding to the daily rockets during a 10 day celebration of Patron Saint Francis. Live violin and choreography will enhance the visceral experience alongside an ethereal video by Stuart Diamond. Her solo violin piece GEMINI FUNK is a virtuosic set of variations derived from a musical cryptogram of her mother's name NAN BENTLEY.
Karen Bentley Pollick spent most of the pandemic in San Pancho, Nayarit where she experimented with vocal sounds and mermaid songs in her pool to depict the angst of the animals responding to the daily rockets during a 10 day celebration of Patron Saint Francis. Live violin and choreography will enhance the visceral experience alongside an ethereal video by Stuart Diamond. Her solo violin piece GEMINI FUNK is a virtuosic set of variations derived from a musical cryptogram of her mother's name NAN BENTLEY.
The program features duos for violin & piano by Ukrainian composers Mykola Kolessa, Valentin Silvestrov, Virko Baley and Myroslav Skoryk, with the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli contributing the final lighthearted notes in solidarity with Ukraine.
Ludmila Yurina graduated from Kyiv Music College in piano and from National Music Academy in composition with Prof. E.Stankovich, completing her post-graduate studies there. She received a Fulbright scholarship in 2010 for studies at Stanford University’s CCRMA.Yurina is an organizer and co-director of festivals of contemporary Ukrainian music in Fort Worth and New York. She has served as artistic director of numerous festivals in Ukraine and abroad. She currently works as Associate Professor in the Department of Composition at the National Music Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv. Her works have been performed and published in Ukraine, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Yurina is a member of the National Composers` Union of Ukraine. Awards: Torneo Internationale di Musica TIM( Italy); Lyatoshynsky Award; Kossenko Award; Lyssenko Award. Creative residences in Germany and Sweden, lectures and workshops in Germany and USA. Yurina composes in many popular musical genres - symphonic, chamber, vocal, choral, chamber opera, electronic music, film music and radio shows.
A native of Palo Alto, California Karen Bentley Pollick studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco and joined the class of Josef Gingold at Indiana University, earning BM and MM degrees with a cognate field in Choral Conducting. She has performed with the Paul Dresher ElectroAcoustic Band since 1999. Her multimedia project ‘Solo Violin and Alternating Currents’ received a grant from the NEA and evolved into ‘Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity’. Karen received a Seed Money Grant for Disseminated Performances from New York Women Composers. While residing in Vilnius she performed ‘Resonances from Vilna’ with pianist Jascha Nemtsov and premiered David A. Jaffe’s violin concerto How Did It Get So Late So Soon? with the Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra. Karen’s debut recording for Toccata Classics presents Hermann Graedener’s two violin concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Her recent recordings garnered top recognition in the Global Music Awards: Graedener Violin Concertos, Chamber Music of Ivan Sokolov, and Orchestral Music of Ole Saxe, featuring the premiere recording of his violin concerto My Manchu Princess & Dance Suite. A founding member of Virtuosos de Cámara, Karen presents chamber music concerts in Puerto Vallarta and Nayarit. Recent concerts include the premieres of Pietà by Jerry Mader and ROMANTARCTICA by Henning Kraggerud, plus live video of MAQA VIOLIN by Yitzhak Yedid.
