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Today’s broadcast is a special tribute prepared for National Women Support Women Day. It is a day that celebrates solidarity, creativity, and the strength of women supporting women. In this spirit, our program honors the life and legacy of Hanna Havrylets (1958–2022), one of Ukraine’s most significant composers, whose music continues to inspire audiences worldwide.
Yet in the end, I still lost to fate.
Maestra Hanna Havrylets was originally on my list of interview guests. Sadly, she passed away on February 27, 2022, from an aneurysm. It was the third day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Because of the war, she could not receive timely medical care. Her music has now become our eternal memory. In the final minutes of this program, let us together commemorate this towering Ukrainian female composer of the 21st century.
I invited 11 Ukrainian female composers to shared about Maestra Havrylets in this episode. To them she was a beloved composer and teacher, remembered with admiration, longing, and sorrow.
Through their voices, we hear how Havrylets influenced colleagues, students, and the wider Ukrainian musical community, and how her legacy continues to resonate among women composers today.
She was a truly important contemporary composer. A graduate of the Lviv Conservatory and the Kyiv Conservatory, she later taught at the Kyiv Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music. Her output was vast: orchestral works, concertos, choral pieces, chamber music, and solo compositions. Her works were performed in Ukraine, Poland, Russia, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Armenia, and Lithuania. In 1999 she received the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine, and in 2005 she was named a Merited Artist of Ukraine.
Havrylets’ music spans symphonies, chamber works, and choral compositions. Her choral writing is especially renowned, blending elements of traditional Ukrainian folk music, ritual, and ancient incantations. She was a composer of extraordinary creative power, an international figure in contemporary music.
Her passing was not only a loss to the musical world, but also a fracture in Ukraine’s cultural memory.
Though the war shows no end in sight, art still opens cracks through which light can enter. With this broadcast, we hope to hear voices of peace and hope, and together bless the future. We believe that one day, victory will be ours.
To commemorate her, we have invited eleven Ukrainian women composers. Through their voices, we hear how Havrylets influenced colleagues, students, and the wider Ukrainian musical community, and how her legacy continues to resonate among women composers today.