The story behind
Andrii Koshman is the head of Nova Opera, a group of Ukrainian artists aiming to find new ways of developing music for the theatre. They are involved in creation of the new synthetic genres and experiment with untypical music and stage performances.
In April 2022, Andrii together with his colleagues was forced to leave Ukraine and relocated to Greece.
Through their eyes
“Thanks to the Ukrainian artists and creatives grant and support program, this summer I took part in the Lotte Lehmann Summer Opera Academy in Perleberg, Germany. It is an intimate and intensive summer program preparing opera singers for professional work in the world of opera. During that time I took voice lessons and master classes, worked with coaches, pianists and directors, while also attended language coaching and german lessons. I set up a recording studio in Athens at BIOS/Romantso which was also provided by the program and made recordings of works by modern Ukrainian composers for baritone, cello and piano. Also, in September with soloists of Nova Opera, we made a live-stream performance for Fade Radio in Athens. On September 28 with the cellist Zhanna Marchinska we are taking part in the Insieme Festival in Rome with Danish-Ukrainian pianist Elisabeth Neilsen. Now we are working closely on the creation of a new project, within the framework of which a documentary film will be shot about the creation of our next opera. The first shootings have already been completed. The estimated dates for the premiere of our project is around February-March 2023, in Athens."
More about Andrii Koshman and Nova Opera
Since 2014 NOVA OPERA created and staged numerous productions: opera-requiem “IYOV” (based on the Book of Job), overnight opera “UnSimple” (based on the novel of Taras Prohasko), opera-circus “BABYLON”, in which circus artists take part, opera-ballet “ARK”, trap-opera “Wozzeck” (collaboration with Ukrainian poet Yurii Izdryk), drama per musica “Hamlet” (collaboration with Ivano-Frankivsk Music and Drama Theatre), futuristic opera “AEROPHONIA”, opera-dystopia “GAZ”(collaboration with Yara Arts Group, director Virlana Tkacz, choreographer Simon Mayer), PhD-opera “What is Zarathustra silent on”(libretto based on the philosophical novel by Friedrich Nietzsche “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). In February, 2021 Re:post-opera “LE” (based on the poetry of Lesya Ukrainka) was presented in Kyiv. The first production of NOVA OPERA was improvisation opera “Coriolanus” based on the tragedy by William Shakespeare.
According to Music Theatre NOW competition in 2018 opera-requiem “IYOV” became one of TOP-10 contemporary operas among 436 participants from 55 countries. It was performed in Paris (France), Copenhagen (Denmark), at The V Festival of Traditional and Avant-garde Music CODES (Lublin, Poland), The Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre, Musikverein (Vienna, Austria), May Opera Evenings Festival (Skopje, Macedonia), PROTOTYPE opera festival in New York and Operadagen Rotterdam.
Iana Boitsova is a cultural project manager from Ukraine. With the help of the MakersXchange Ukrainian Artists & Creatives Support Program she has created her new project “Museum of Ukrainian Victory” about the war in her country.
The story behind
Iana Boitsova is a cultural project manager and co-founder of Pixelated Realities NGO based in Odesa, Ukraine – a public organisation with a mission to improve and popularize the digital methods of cultural heritage preservation, in particular the: 3D scanning, digital production, virtual and augmented reality for restoration, reconstruction and design in historical buildings. During the years of Pixelated Realities existence, numerous cultural heritage preservation/documentation and educational projects were implemented on the national and international scale.
When the war broke out in Ukraine, she was forced to leave the country with her family, going first to Romania and then to Italy.
Through their eyes
“During the period of the support program, we’ve communicated with the project team regarding my plans for future work in the sphere of cultural heritage digital preservation in Ukraine. While being in Italy, we decided that it is necessary to contact local cultural institutions and organizations, as well as relevant EU ones, in order to start new partnerships and look for opportunities of cooperation. The team conducted an in-depth interview and was aware of all my current needs. I was therefore selected to receive a scholarship to renew my activities, got a number of opportunities which corresponded to my needs and participated in a networking event in Brussels organized by Creative Hubs Network. Thanks to the support of the program I’ve managed to change my location for a better place to live, get valuable contacts on the networking event, especially in the activist and artistic scene of Berlin, found an educational institution interested in cooperation with Ukrainian specialists in cultural heritage and was able to involve a communication and partner management specialist to our project Museum of Ukrainian Victory. We were able to keep our project in Ukraine on an active level until the first grant support started on 19 Sept. During the program we’ve got two documental films shot in Odesa and Kharkiv, started a long-term cooperation initiative with Iconem, France with a perspective of joint work with UNESCO head office.”
More about Iana Boitsova & The Pixelated Realities
Iana specialised in IT, digital and creative team management, building products from scratch and launching projects. Her expertise lies in communication, marketing and development of online and offline training in a variety of soft skills. Iana has a long experience in operating and grant management, business planning, finance, budgeting, accounting and taxation of Pixelated Realities NGO as well as her own Individual Entrepreneur.
From 2017 to 2019 Pixelated Realities, among other activities organised and implemented the “Odesa by touch” project, which included bronze miniatures of famous monuments of Odesa for visually impaired and blind people and was supported by the Public Budget of Odesa. Contract work involved 3D scanning of 6 historical buildings, 3D modelling for digital production, author supervision of the production and installation of sculptures in the city. The uniqueness of the project is that these first miniatures are made as an exact copy of the object, without additional details of a sculptor. The focus group of visually impaired people in Odesa, who were the authors of the project, highly appreciated the quality of the layouts and the accuracy of details to the touch.
Iana was the main coordinator of the Pixelated Realities “Very Digital Residence – Residences on Digital Technologies and Media in Odesa and Kharkiv”. The program was developed and launched together with Gwara Media two residencies in digital production and media art, which involved 25 artists, sculptors, architects and 3D artists to reinterpret local cultural heritage. The communication coverage of the project amounted to more than half a million people. Currently, Pixelated Realities continue their activities advocating for the digital methods of cultural heritage preservation which become even more actual and urgent in times of destructive war in Ukraine.
Key Takeaways
MAX (Makers’ eXchange) project is a pilot policy project, co-funded by the European Union, that aims to define and test policies and actions supporting the mobility and exchanges of experience between the cultural and creative industries, creative hubs, maker-spaces, fab-labs and formal and non-formal learning and skills development systems in a cross-sectoral way and embed makers’ mobility schemes for skills development and inclusion into mainstream CCIs support programmes, policies and ecosystems across Europe.
Name
Andrii Koshman / Nova Opera
Current location
Athens, Greece
Professional field
Contemporary opera, site-specific music, theatre performances
