Free music-and-art NOW Festival to kick off Thursday at Capital University
For the composer-in-residence at this year’s NOW Festival at Capital University, the festival theme is highly relevant: “Art in Time of Conflict.”
Alla Zagaykevych is a Ukrainian composer specializing in electroacoustic music. She has continued to work and teach throughout the Russian invasion and war on Ukraine, even managing to take a group of students to France, a hub of innovation for electronic music. She’ll arrive Feb. 11 at Capital and be in residence through Feb. 17.
“Ukrainians know how to get around in war,” said Tony Zilincik, associate professor of music and with Dina Lentsner, co-coordinator of the NOW Festival.
The free festival, which began in 1987 and has been offered almost every year since, is dedicated to the performance of music written in the past five years by composers who may not be as widely known throughout the world as they should be, Zilincik said.
Zagaykevych, he said, “is a real innovator in her field; she’s just fantastic.”
Zagaykevych, 57, is a performance artist and musicologist as well as an electroacoustic composer. She has written symphonies, instrumental and vocal music, and film music. Following her residency at Capital, she will return to Ukraine.
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Her work will be presented in a concert on Feb. 15 in Huntington Recital Hall. On Sunday afternoon, Feb. 11, she will appear in conversation with Christopher Purdy of WOSU Classical 101 at the Bexley Public Library. Their discussion will touch on what it has been like for Zagaykevych to work and survive in a country under attack and how art and the human spirit can remain resilient.
Other events at the festival will include a celebration of the music of Ohio composer Thomas Wells, an improvisation concert with Capital University professors Stan Smith (guitar) and Julia Licata (percussion), music by student composers, a chamber jazz recital and a wind ensembles concert. A complete list of events and times is at www.capital.edu/now-festival.
A visual-art component of the festival includes an exhibit of works by West African-born artist Talle Bamazi, continuing through March 27 in Capital’s Schumacher Gallery.
Because the world seems to be in a perpetual state of conflict — on the African continent, in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Miramar, the Sudan and beyond — Zilincik believes the NOW Festival theme will resonate with audiences. The brass musician and composer, who has taught at Capital for 25 years, recalled another time of conflict.
“On Sept. 11, 2001, I remember where I was, like most people,” he said.
That evening, Zilincik was scheduled to be at a rehearsal for the Brass Band of Columbus at which the group was to record a Christmas album. Zilincik and other members thought their director, Paul Droste, would cancel, but he didn’t.
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“He said, ‘If we stop doing what we do,’ they win,” Zilincik said. “We probably had the best recording session ever.
“From that day, I always think that what we artists do in times of conflict is to move other people, communicate and let them know there is light on the other side … “Art can be an elegy, it can be uplifting. I believe what we do is crucial in times of conflict.”
At a glance
The NOW festival will run Feb. 8-18 at Capital University, East Main Street and College Avenue, Bexley. All events are free and open to the public. For details, visit capital.edu/now-festival.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Free NOW Festival to take place Feb. 8-18 at Capital University
