Since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, Ukrainian musicologist and former director of Kyiv Symphony Orchestra Anna Stavychenko has made it her mission to promote Ukrainian classical music to the world. She’s currently working on a novel about her experiences since Russia’s full-scale invasion, which she started during a Harriman Institute residency for displaced Ukrainian artists at Columbia Global Centers Paris and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Listen to her story.

Check out the Winter 2024 issue of Harriman Magazine to read an excerpt from Anna’s novel in progress and other essays and articles about Ukraine.

Click here to view a concert from Stavychenko's 1991 Project, hosted in collaboration with Columbia Global Centers | Reid Hall, which includes Maksym Berezovsky's Sonata for violin and harpsichord featured in the episode (23:19). Performed by Antonina Krysa and Olga Vardanyan. And click here to view the 1991 Project's concert featuring Zoltan Almashi's, Suite No. 1 for Cello Solo, performed by Olga Driga (14:14), and Victoria Poleva's Gulf stream for Two Cellos performed by Driga and Nataliia Ivanovska (45:53).

Watch the he National Philharmonic of Ukraine’s performance for the Paris Philharmonic in Kyiv.

Zoya Laktionova recalls her Mariupol childhood, her relationship with Ukrainian language and culture, and her journey to become a documentary filmmaker.

Ukrainian writer and journalist Nikita Grigorov was a university student studying Russian literature at Donetsk National University when Russia launched its war in Donbas in 2014. He supported an independent Ukraine and watched in disbelief as friends turned against him, sometimes violently. Then he fled to Kyiv with his father. Listen to his story.