CONCERT NOTES: The Zuk Duo at the University of Toronto

by Doreen Allison

TORONTO - The Zuk Duo, guest piano soloists with the Vesnivka Choir and the Toronto Ukrainian Male Chamber Choir, performed in a concert held at the MacMillan Theater of the Univrsity of Toronto on April 21 in a program featuring works by contemporary Ukrainian composers.

The Zuk Duo, who actively promote music by Ukrainian and Canadian composers, commissioned and performed works for two pianos by four living composers who studied in Kyiv at the National Music Academy: Lesia Dychko, Zhanna Kolodub, Halyna Ovcharenko and Hennady Lashenko. All the compositions were written during the 1990s.

The contemporary style treated the piano as a percussive instrument as the performer struck the keys or plucked the strings inside the piano. Most notable was the glissando on the keyboard echoed by the second performer by plucking the strings inside the piano. National elements of folk music and dance contributed to the energetic and rhythmic movement, to which the audience responded with enthusiasm.

In 1998 Prof. Luba Zuk, member of the McGill Faculty of Music in Montreal, and Dr. Ireneus Zuk, director at the School of Music, Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario, were awarded medals and the title "Merited Artist of Ukraine."

Prof. Luba Zuk also was awarded the Shevchenko Medal by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in recognition of her research and numerous first performances of Ukrainian music in North America and Ukraine.

Doreen Allison is a musicologist who has enjoyed programs by the Zuk Duo for several years in Canadian cities as well as in London. She resides in Mississauga, Ontario.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 7, 2002, No. 27, Vol. LXX

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