For weeks, Kharkiv and the surrounding region has been under regular bombardment, but May 23, the day I arrived in the city, was an especially tragic occasion for our festival, KharkivMusicFest. My train ride to Kharkiv from Chełm, southeast Poland, took almost 24 hours. The cars were crowded with passengers. In my compartment was a […]
Author Archives: Vitali Alekseenok
Posted inEssay
Wounded but Alive
KharkivMusicFest is both one of the newest and one of the largest classical music festivals in Ukraine. Founded in 2018, it opened with an ambitious program. Since then the festival has faced huge challenges—a pandemic, a war—yet has still managed to find ways of offering culture to people in Kharkiv. In 2022, I became artistic […]