A sense of great freedom

An event as part of the concert series ‘Global Sound Stories: Accordion Meets Literature’.

What happens when music leaves its familiar space and bursts out into the open like a wild animal? A musical motif can resemble a disobedient memory that tells of the present.

*Music from the Window* is the title of a series of texts by Yevgenia Belorusets, written especially for *Global Sound Stories* and dedicated to her grandfather, Mikhail: during the Second World War, he was a soldier; later, he worked as an engineer in Soviet Ukraine whilst also being an improviser who composed music exclusively for the members of his family. He was regarded as an ‘unreliable’ citizen and faced the threat of persecution on several occasions. Yevgenia Belorusets recalls:

“The atmosphere would transform in the presence of his music. The rooms and the conversations would change. It was a feeling of great freedom. It was precisely this freedom that I was seeking when I wrote my text. I wanted to expand the space and reveal the dialogue with entirely different realities within his music. Music is constantly engaging in dialogue with other cultures, other landscapes, other experiences.”

The concert combines the series of texts with the Motion Trio’s musical programme.

The multi-award-winning author Yevgenia Belorusets has been documenting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since February 2022.

The Motion Trio, comprising Janusz Wojtarowicz, Paweł Baranek and Marcin Głądziyn, began with street concerts and, having released 14 albums, has received acclaim from both jazz and classical critics.

Music from Open Windows – A Private Journey Through Time: The Accordion in 20th-Century Kyiv.

Contributors

• Yevgenia Belorusets (text and reading),
• Motion Trio (accordion)

Tickets

Tickets for the reading can be found here

Information on further events celebrating the Instrument of the Year – the accordion – can be found here

We would like to thank the LOTTO Foundation Berlin for supporting the project ‘600 Accordions. Your Stories. Our Berlin’ with the concert series ‘Global Sound Stories – Accordion Meets Literature’.