Duo Voytenko - Barsch

Saturday, 14 May 2022, 7:00 pm
St. Johannis Church, Wolfenbüttel, Glockengasse 2
Oxana Voytenko voice | compositions

Alexander Barsch piano | improvisation

Amber is something very special that connects me deeply with my homeland. This luminous, light and not cold stone is for me the symbol of my childhood, carefree, endless imagination and family.
My childhood memories bring me back to Kaliningrad. To the Baltic coast, where I used to walk barefoot with my parents and my twin sister in the summer. Sometimes at sunset we could find little glowing stones. They were ambers! It was a great experience when an imaginative child looked at the stones for hours and then lovingly collected them.
Kaliningrad is in Russia and was the East Prussian capital Königsberg until 1936.
Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave and lies on the Baltic Sea.
My father was sent on duty from Ukraine, where he was born and grew up, to Kaliningrad to help rebuild the area in the post-war period.
Tilsit, a small provincial town now called Sovetsk (Kaliningrad region), is my home town. I was born and raised there.
The German language and German cultural heritage have fascinated and influenced me since my school days. That's why I studied German philology at the Immanuel Kant University in Kaliningrad after my Abitur and made the German language my profession.
Music is the second pillar of my life. So my creative side led me to Germany, where I studied jazz singing at the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover.
THE AMBER-MOSAIC is a duo project with the pianist and composer Alexander Barsch.
Alexander was born in Hanover and studied history at Leibniz University Hanover and jazz piano at the University of Music, Drama and Media.
That's where our musical paths crossed.
Alexander's grandmother grew up in the former Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz) and had to flee West Prussia during World War II. Alexander has processed his grandmother's memories in his compositions.
Through music, improvisation, installation and texts, we want to tell the audience our personal story about courage, strength, overcoming and ambition. With this project we want to discuss the current social question: What are cultural boundaries and do they exist? To what extent can music play its part in overcoming these borders?