Mirror images.... not quite...

In a post just over two weeks ago I noted that it was Ukrainian pianist Ethella Chupryk's birthday, and somewhere along the way a good friend of mine Dirk Lustig, came up to me a the Krayina Mriy festival and says. "I was clicking all over your Multiply site to see where I could listen to the album you recorded with Ethella in Vancouver. Why did you tease me like that?"

I thought about it for a while and was trying to figure out what he was talking about, and then remembered that my blog posts here get mirrored on my Multiply blog... Well Dirk I hope are keeping up with things even though you are at some toy fair in London. Go visit Ethella's MySpace site and you will get a chance to have a listen to two compositions.

The first it called Barcarolla composed by Stanislav Lyudkevych, and the second is called Ildi composed by Yuriy Shtyn, known under the pseudonym Yurok during the days of the art-rock Amok project of Loony Pelen.

Dirk, and everyone else out there, enjoy!

Happy Birthday Ethella Chupryk

Sometimes no matter how hard you try to get the timing right something gets in the way. This was the case with Ethella's birthday gift for this year. It was planned that by now we would have had The Vancouver Collection - Undiscovered Geniuses - Piano Music in our hands and be with Ethella in L'viv to present her with some complementary copies of the Ukrainian release, but that didn't happen so I guess I will have to get on the horn and give my pianist a call to wish her a Happy Birthday or Mnohaia Lita as we say in Ukrainian.

So for those of you who are wondering just what the above mentioned CD is, I will give you a all a sneak preview... and a peek.

The double CD set is a compilation of Ukrainian classical music of well known and some not so well known Ukrainian composers all performed by Ethella Chupryk. Recorded at the UBC School of Music on a wonderfully restored Hamburg Steinway & Sons piano at the beginning of this year. In addition to the Ukrainian composers are Ethella's own transcriptions of well known classical pieces for piano, which are traditionally performed by complete orchestras. These include G. Bizet's Carmen, W.A. Mozart's Requiem (Lacrymosa and Domine Jesu), S. Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances – Watlz 2nd part and P. Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy and Adagio (Pas de Deux)).


The Ukrainian composers on this album include:

• Vasyl Barvinsky
  
• Mykola Kolessa
  
• Victor Kosenko
  
• Mykola Lysenko
  
• Stanislav Lyudkevych
  
• Levko Revutsky
  
• Yuriy Shtyn
  
• Myroslav Skoryk/Ethella Chupryk
  

The double CD set includes 18 tracks and has a total running time of 81 minutes and 40 seconds.

For a quick listen to other works performed by Ethella but not on this double CD set visit her MySpace page.