Ukrainian Orpheus from America

In Soviet times, this Ukrainian American helped reform Kyiv music life and produced music performances and recordings made by modern Ukrainian composers abroad. Baley is a successful personality in various branches of American music culture: conducting, concerts, performances, musicology, and pedagogy.

At the same time, he is fairly productive in the domain of Ukrainian music. You can be surprised with such a parallel: Las Vegas and Ukrainian music? Yes, precisely, and this is no wonder.

Baley, 71, was born in Lviv region before the Second World War. His family had to emigrate to the West. They first went to Germany and later to the USA. Baley’s father, Petro, was a well-known public figure, political scientist, and a publicist. He authored brilliant research on our recent epoch: Dispowered Society. Marxism: Utopia in Theory and Terror in Practice.

A fruitful experiment in the sphere of music education was carried out in Western Ukraine, which then was under Poland, in pre-war years. A system of music education was launched under the aegis of Lysenko Higher Music Institute (VMIL), which launched creative activities in nearly every small and big city of the region. After coming to the USA in the 1950s, the students and fellows of Liudkevych and Barvinsky organized the UMIA — the Ukrainian Music Institute of America, which has been successfully operating for 50 years now. Its branches in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Passaic, and Buffalo can be compared with the VMIL branches in Lviv, Stryi, Drohobych, Peremyshl, Kolomyia, Stanislav, Ternopil, etc.

Baley began his music education in one of UMIA schools, where he was taught the fundamentals of high music culture. Native Ukrainian music art and world classics had a prominent place in his studies. Later Baley polished his skills by completing studies at the Los Angeles conservatoire, taking piano lessons, and learning composition and the art of conducting from outstanding educators.

Baley has always had a feeling that he belongs to Ukrainian culture. However, he reached a point when he realized that this was not enough for him. That is why he started wondering what was going on in the sphere of music out there behind the iron curtain. Who was continuing the traditions of talented Ukrainian composers?

He was sensitive to avant-garde tendencies in world music of the 20th century and was especially interested in the works of Borys Liatoshynsky and his followers. Baley’s search and hopes finally came to fruition. It turned out that Liatoshynsky taught an entire pleiad of talented young composers, who later went down in the history of Ukraine’s and world’s music culture as the ‘Sixtiers’: Leonid Hrabovsky, Valentyn Sylvestrov, Vitalii Hodziatsky, Volodymyr Huba, Volodymyr Zahortsev, and others.

Baley got to know the creators of new Ukrainian music who lived across the ocean. They carried on voluminous correspondence; he supported his new friends by helping organize performances of their works in Europe and the USA. Later on his activities reached new heights — on his invitation some Ukrainian composers received an opportunity to come to America for the first time with at least part of their ideology-free oeuvre.

In Soviet times the way from Ukraine to the USA or Canada (and in the reverse direction) went only through Moscow. Starting in the late 1980s, Baley’s trips to Ukraine were arranged using contacts with some Russian musicians. At that time, he published an extensive article about contemporary Ukrainian music in the English periodical Soviet Ukrainian Affairs (London 1988). Its title was “Orpheus Unleashed.” In 1994, this article was translated into Ukrainian and published in the journal Suchasnist.

“Every Ukrainian composer and historiographer has to first become engaged in the process and only then begin to put up resistance to the oppression of Ukraine’s history. It is a great pity that what Ukrainians know about their own culture bears too much resemblance to the simplified image which is being imposed on them by somebody from the outside and is supported by others on the inside.”

Baley’s name was first mentioned in the USSR in an article Leonid Hrabovsky published in the periodical Muzykalnaia Zhyzn (Musical Life). The author praised Baley as a versatile artistic personality. In his career as a conductor he went from the orchestra conductor in the US military to the conductor and musical director of the Las Vegas Symphony and Chamber Orchestras. On numerous occasions he was invited as a guest conductor to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, Lviv, and Mexico. As a music expert he wrote a series of publications about avant-garde music, including Ukrainian and, more broadly, Soviet music.

He lectured in Harvard, Yale, and other universities. He wrote a series of articles for the New Grove Dictionary. Baley’s outstanding organizational skills often reach beyond music. He has made a number of recordings with many orchestras, including the well-known Kyiv Kamerata, and has proven to be a good organizer of grand musical events. The well-known international festival KyivMusicFest was started back in 1990 by Baley and Ivan Karabyts. Baley has also produced quite a few solo concerts of Ukrainian composers in the USA and Canada.

Composing music is a major part of Baley’s activities. He has written wonderful music pieces with easily discernable Ukrainian traces. As a modern author well-versed in avant-garde traditions, he has a number of compositions that echo the opuses of eminent representatives of the avant-garde. These include vocal series, music pieces for different chamber sets, concertos for a variety of instruments (quite in the spirit of post-modernism), and so on.

Baley has also authored soundtracks for Ukrainian movies. He wrote music for Yurii Illienko’s Lebedyne ozero: Zona (Swan Lake: The Zone) and Molytva za hetmana Mazepu (Prayer for Hetman Mazepa).

A series of performances of Baley’s works took place in New York toward his 70th anniversary. The concerts had a telling title — Illuminating Ukraine: Virko Baley & The Avant-Garde. The chamber ensemble Continuum had a part in these concerts, which featured music by Baley: “Palm of Hand” (clarinet, violin, and piano), “Song Without Words” (violoncello and piano), “Dance Without Words” (clarinet and piano), and “Klytemnestra” (a dramatic scene for mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano). The first two works were performed for the first time, and the rest were New York premieres. The set of performers included Rashel Kelovei (mezzo-soprano), Moran Kaz (clarinet), David Greshen (bass clarinet), Tom Chiu (violin), Stephanie Griffin (viola), Clir Braint (violoncello), Sharil Zelzer (piano), and Joel Zaks (piano and conducting).

In the early 1990s Baley often visited Ukraine. Most of music festivals in Kyiv and Lviv, some of which he started, would have been difficult to imagine without his active participation as a pianist, conductor, or successful manager. When you think of Baley, you see in your mind’s eye the stately figure of the maestro who is always busy with something but friendly and attentive as usual. The critics call him Ukrainian Orpheus from America. He was the first American to be awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize (1996). Even until today he continues to do so much to promote Ukrainian culture throughout the world.