European critics call Lviv-born vocalist, composer and actress Mariana Sadovska "Ukraine's Bjork." The New York Times compares her vocal power and expressive range to rock star P. J. Harvey.
Join KQED Live for this rare San Francisco appearance and dialogue with Sadovska, an artist renowned for her projects that merge Ukrainian folk song with contemporary theater and social activism. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, Sadovska has been tirelessly offering her evocative voice to raise international awareness of, and aid for, the embattled people of her homeland.
Oakland's beloved women's vocal ensemble Kitka, has collaborated with Sadovska on multiple projects in the Bay Area and in Ukraine since 2004, most notably the acclaimed vocal-theater and recording project The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds. For more than four decades, Kitka has shared a vast and breathtaking repertoire of traditional music from Balkan, Baltic, Caucasus, and Slavic lands, while also creating adventurous original work inspired by the exquisite and unusual harmonic sonorites rooted in these storied parts of the world. Kitka will join Sadovska in solidarity to perform a set of haunting Ukrainian polyphonic folk songs expressing the fragility, fierceness, and resilience of the Ukrainian spirit.