Laboratory of innovation: Ukrainian music past and present
Date and time:
Monday 19 May, 2025
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
79 Holland Park
79 Holland Park, W11 3SW
London
Join us to discover Ukraine’s rich tradition of musical innovation, from modernism to today’s powerful responses to war and imperialism.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has increased interest in Ukraine’s long-overlooked cultural contributions, including in the sphere of concert music. Most prominently, Ukrainian composers, particularly those responding in real-time to the brutality of an unprovoked invasion, have garnered the attention of established musical institutions and appear increasingly on concert programs. However, Ukraine’s musical contributions have a much longer history: one that mirrors in compelling ways the challenges—and innovations—of today’s artists, and one whose discovery and understanding will not only enrich musical programming, but take a real step towards interrogating and dismantling the imperialist structures that govern cultural institutions. This talk will explore both Ukraine’s rich musical history, particularly the composers of the modernist period (1917–1937), and compare past innovations to the work of Ukrainian composers today. By connecting the dots across a century of music, guest speaker Dr Leah Batstone makes the case for Ukraine’s incorporation into the performance repertoire.
The Ukrainian Institute London is an independent charity entirely funded through donations, ticket sales, and project grants. All proceeds from ticket sales directly support our programme.
Speaker
Dr Leah Batstone
Dr Leah Batstone is a musicologist, educator, and creative director of the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in New York City. She is a leading scholar of art music in Ukraine and is currently working on two forthcoming publications: a monograph on Ukrainian musical modernism and a handbook on Stefania Turkevych’s Symphony No. 1, the first known symphony by a Ukrainian woman composer. She is also co-editing Perspectives on Ukrainian Music (Indiana University Press) and organizing a special issue on Ukraine in Musicologica Austriaca. Her scholarship has appeared in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music and Letters, 19th-Century Music, and Musicology Now, and her upcoming article in the Journal of the American Musicological Society explores Ukrainian modernism in the context of imperial music histories. Dr Batstone has organized conferences at the University of Vienna and Sorbonne University in Paris, bringing global attention to Ukraine’s musical avant-gardes. She is currently completing a visiting scholar appointment at NYU’s Jordan Center and previously held the prestigious REWIRE Marie Sklodowska Curie postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Vienna. In August of 2025, she will assume the position of Assistant Professor and Area Head of Music History at Montclair State University in New Jersey. The Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, which Dr Batstone started in 2020, has been covered in The New Yorker and The New York Times.
Moderator
Philip Ross Bullock
Philip Ross Bullock is Professor of Russian Literature and Music at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Russian at Wadham College, Oxford. He has published widely on aspects of literature and music across the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, and his most recent publications include Pyotr Tchaikovsky (London, 2016) and—as editor—Rachmaninoff and His World (Chicago, 2022). He also collaborates widely with various arts and cultural organisations, including the Oxford International Festival and London’s Wigmore Hall, and in summer 2022, he was scholar-in-residence at the Bard Music Festival.
