
Organist Gail Archer will be touring her Concert for Ukrainian Relief from February through May 2025, and she’ll hit Toronto on February 1. She’ll be performing on one of the city’s largest pipe organs at the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church.
The concert will include material from her 2020 album Chernivtsi, A Recording of Contemporary Ukrainian Organ Music.
Gail Archer
Based in New York, Gail Archer has become noted for her adventurous take on classical organ repertoire.
Gail Archer is a concert organist, recording artist, choral conductor and lecturer with an international profile. She has an extensive recording catalogue that includes Russian music, Liszt, Bach, and more in a wide range of material.
Archer founded Musforum, an international network for women organists. She is college organist at Vassar College, and director of the music program at Barnard College, Columbia University. A faculty member at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, Gail has performed in Eastern Europe every year since 2011, including Russian as well as Ukrainian halls and churches.
Among her other accomplishments, she became the first American woman to perform the complete Messiaen cycle in 2008. Archer has also become well known for researching and rediscovering the work of composers who have become obscured by time. Her 2020 album Chernivtsi, A Recording of Contemporary Ukrainian Organ Music, dives deep into little known music. The album, from which she draws the concert program, consists largely of shorter works by contemporary composers.
Music by Ukrainian Composers
The program includes by 19th-21st century Ukrainian composers. It’s part of a decade-long effort on her part to sharing Eastern European organ literature, and in particular, to recognize the contributions of Ukrainian composers. When it comes to the pipe organ, one of the issues in Russia and Ukraine is that the instrument itself is much scarcer than in your average Western European city, where they are ubiquitous.
“In my own view, the organ music contributions from Ukraine have been enormous, and human culture and civilization would be far poorer without them,” says Archer in a statement. “I hope this will be kept in mind particularly in this period of conflict and crisis.”
The program includes:
- Fanfare (Kotyuk),
- Benedictus: Song of Zachariah (Kotyuk),
- Piece in Five Movements (Machl)
- Fantasia (Goncharenko)
- Passacaglia (Kolessa)
- Chacona (Ostrova)
- Fantasie (Kryschanowskij)
As Archer notes in a paper, some of the works were published, while others were given to her directly by the composers.
Bohdan Kotyuk (1951 – 2022) was born into a family of religious leaders and philosophers, including Archbishop Samuel Cyryl Stefanowicz (1755- 1858). He studied music at the Lviv Conservatory, and was an ethno-organologist, conductor, lecturer-musicologist, music critic, producer, and editor-in-chief of the Collegium musicum publishing house as well as a practicing organist and composer.
Tadeusz Machl (1922 – 2003) was born in Lviv to Polish parents. He would become an organist, composer and educator. After the Second World War, he studied composition and organ at the State Higher School of Music in Cracow, and later continued his education in Paris. In 1950, while still a student, he’d take home third prize at the Bach International Competition in Poznań.
Viktor Goncharenko (b. 1959) is a native of the city of Dnipro, Ukraine. He studied composition with at the Kyiv Conservatory, where he graduated in 1983. He is a music editor and a computer modelling specialist for publishers in Kyiv.
Mykola Kolessa (1903 – 2006) was born in Sambir, near Lviv, into a musical family. He studied and later taught at Lviv Conservatory, eventually serving as Rector.
Svitlana Ostrova (b. 1961), a native of Kyiv, studied choral conducting, composition and organ at the Music Academy in Kyiv. She is an author and music educator, and teaches at children’s music schools as well as conducting the vocal ensemble Shchedrivochka.
Iwan Kryschanowskij (1867-1924) grew up in Kyiv, where he studied both music and medicine. Successful at both, he studied with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, also teacher of Stravinsky. Kryschanowskij’s work explores the eras modernism with the organ.
- The concert is free/PWYC, with all proceeds going to war relief agencies. More information [HERE].
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