RADIO 477! is a new theatre piece based on the first jazz musical created in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1929, which had catchy songs, wild dances, a spectacular set and fabulous costumes. It captivated its audiences but did not endear itself to the Party bosses and was soon pulled from the repertoire.
Like many of the artists, the text and music to the production were assumed to be lost during Stalinist purges. However, a few years ago, director Virlana Tkacz found the conductor’s score hidden in an archive. Serhiy Zhadan, lauded as one Ukraine’s best poets, who lives in Kharkiv, wrote a new text about the city today, based on the original structure of the show. New Yorker Anthony Coleman, a legendary avant-garde downtown pianist, created music for the show inspired by the original score by Yuliy Meitus. The project was conceived and directed by Virlana Tkacz, who heads Yara Arts Group. Last November they worked on the show in Kharkiv and were to perform it in March, but at the end of February, the Russians invaded Ukraine, changing history and the show forever.
Serhiy Zhadan (text & lyrics) is heralded as the best writer in Ukraine today, winning four international wards this year and a nomination for a Nobel Prize. He was born in the Luhansk Region of Ukraine and educated in Kharkiv where he lives today. He is the author of twelve books of poetry. His prose works: Voroshilovgrad , Mesopotamia, and The Orphanage were awarded the Angelus Central European Literature Award, the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award, and the Brücke Berlin Prize. He is the front man for the band Zhadan & the Dogs and has collaborated with Yara Arts Group since 2002. Yale University Press published his selected poems as What We Live For/What We Die For translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps in 2019.
Anthony Coleman (composer and pianist) is one of the key figures of the New York music scene. His work bridges the gap between composition and improvisation, uptown and downtown, and spanning free improvisation, jazz, Jewish music, and contemporary chamber music. After earning a MA in composition from Yale School of Music, Coleman immersed himself in New York’s downtown Scene. Coleman has recorded 15 CDs and has played on more than 150. He’s on the faculty of the New England Conservatory.
Virlana Tkacz (director & co-translator) heads the Yara Arts Group and has directed forty original shows at La MaMa in New York that also performed in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Bishkek, Ulaanbaatar, and Ulan Ude. She received an NEA Poetry Translation Fellowship for her work with Wanda Phipps on Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry. Her production of 1917-2017: Tychyna Zhadan & the Dogs won the 2018 New York Innovative Theatre Award for best musical. She is the author of Three Wooden Trunks, a book of poetry.
Performers
George Drance
Silvana Gonzalez
Akiko Hiroshima
Susan Hwang
Petro Ninovskyi
Jacob Alexander Simon
Lesya Verba.
Live orchestra led by Anthony Coleman (piano)
Anna Abondolo (bass)
Martin Ehrlich (clarinet)
Melissa Elledge (accordion)
Ron Horton (trumpet)
James Paul Nadien (drums)
Aliya Ultan (cello)
