“Visions” is a dance-vocal play based on the drama-extravaganza “Forest Song” of the Ukrainian writer and poet Lesya Ukrainka. It is also the first play of the “Theatrical Experimental Youth Space” (TEYS) — a creative Odessa association.
The play offers a fresh look at the classics of Ukrainian drama and asks the unexpected question, “What if?”.
We could describe the whole sound concept of “Visions” in just three words: Ukrainian ethnic and orchestra. But that wouldn’t be interesting. 🙂
Forest Song is a story that is full of mysticism and mythical forest creatures. It is a kind of ode to nature and its beauty. It is the love story of Mavka and the ordinary guy Lukash, which began with the melody of the sopilka (traditional Ukrainian wooden flute). So the choice of ethnic instruments was obvious.
Sopilka, bandura, and cimbalom create the needed emotional mood and help convey the feelings of the main characters and the emotions that the original script sought to lay. The orchestra, in its turn, «frames» ethnic instruments and adds depth, scale, and drama to the sound.
For Vlad, “Visions” was the first project where he had to set words to music, excluding the last album of TOTAL-EMPTY. The very task of “set the words of Lesya Ukrainka to original music” sounded like a challenge.
But everything has turned not so scary because the poetry of the Forest Song is very melodic on its own. Thus the melodies were born almost on their own while playing an acoustic guitar. Then from these sketches, they’ve scaled to full-fledged compositions with space for vocal parts.
A professional in his field: a clear understanding of the tasks, a deep analysis of the project, always on time (often much earlier) finishing the outlined volume of work, the ability to listen and hear the customer, the presence of one’s own opinion and intuition, which greatly helped to fulfil tasks.
