The Impreza Trio experiments

Since the 1960s by far the strongest musical trend in the world has been a new look at traditional musical instruments. Stringed, percussion, and wind instruments blend in with everything — from rock to electronic music. Experience has shown that if a musician wants to enter the virtual encyclopedia of musical gurus, at least one stereotype should be broken.

The traditional Ukrainian bandura has also been the object of such experimentations, but until now no one has ever managed to extract any uncharacteristic sounds from this instrument. In this regard, Impreza, a trio of female bandura players, is a trailblazer. When they play their instruments and “maneuver” their conservatory-trained voices, these young women focus not so much on the traditional Ukrainian bandura repertoire as on classics and popular songs. Imagine the music of Bach or the immortal song “Besame mucho” played on a bandura. It sounds unusual, but this is just one example of a stereotype being shattered.

The members of Impreza, who have taken part in several international competitions, share professionalism and musical outlook. “I know the girls very well. They have very high professional capabilities,” said Liudmyla Harmash, the trio’s artistic director. “When they were still at the conservatory, despite a certain degree of conservatism, in the good sense of the word, that prevailed there, the girls understood that if they wanted to capture young audiences, they had to develop their capabilities and the bandura’s, and not confine themselves to folk traditions exclusively but turn to other genres. We are deliberately popularizing our great wealth by promoting new genres so that the bandura will sound in a way it never has.”

“We want to popularize our folk instrument,” said Olha Aleksandrenko, the trio’s producer. “I think the bandura has been unjustly forgotten. And if it is going to have a comeback and be heard and interpreted in contemporary ways, it should be adapted to modern music.”

The bandura is a very complex and multifaceted instrument: it can sound like a harpsichord or a guitar, or even assume the musical coloring of a whole orchestra. In terms of the number of strings and its capacity, a bandura equals six guitars. The Impreza decided to use this potential of the instrument in an alternative way. The most difficult aspect is adapting works for the bandura: this is a job for professional composers, who are not that easy to find. So the trio of musicians and their artistic director are doing the adaptations themselves, at the same time seeking out composers who are capable of producing high-quality arrangements.

“Everybody chooses the repertoire he or she likes. Naturally, there are different composers, concepts, and performers. I am not a performer of very modern music, but it gives me great pleasure to perform contemporary harmonies and the works of well-known contemporary composers,” said Lesia Korol, when The Day asked her if modern popular music clashes with the bandura.

The trio began experimenting with classics by Bach and Vivaldi. According to the trio’s artistic director, Impreza had to fight to create a new sound for this traditional Ukrainian instrument. Today the conservatory willingly accepts Debussy whose compositions flow from the bandura’s strings, although in the past it was thought that this instrument could not be used to perform music outside the works of composers, like Platon Maiboroda and Oleksandr Bilash.

The members of the bandura trio still don’t know how music traditionalists will react to their innovations. According to Harmash, popular tunes played on the bandura receive an enthusiastic welcome abroad. “It is a highly professional undertaking for a musician to play and sing at the same time. There is practically no such thing in the world.”

“Playing in Ukraine and abroad sparks entirely different feelings,” Korol told this reporter. “When you sing Ukrainian songs to our Ukrainian audiences, you feel delight and gratitude because people understand what you are singing about. They sympathize with you and you feel their hearts go out to you. Abroad, there are different audience, different applauses, and different responses, but they also provoke very positive emotions.”

To shock audiences, the Impreza Trio engaged a young ballerina on a trial basis. This resulted in a highly untraditional performance combining banduras, the “Ave Maria,” and classical choreography. Alvina Kalchenko, the director of the Ballet Academy who staged the dance, explained that the idea for this kind of performance emerged spontaneously on the eve of International Women’s Day.

The trio of musicians and the choreographer believe that their experiment was very successful. They are now working on a large program that will feature Ukrainian ballet stars.