Grammy Award winner and Music Professor Nadia Shpachenko will perform a CD release concert for her project "Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine."
The event is on Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. at the Cal Poly Pomona Recital Hall, Building 24. Ticket sales will benefit Cal Poly Pomona student scholarships. Proceeds from "Invasion" CD sales at the concert will be donated to Lisa Batiashvili Foundation, which supports Ukrainian musicians affected by the war, and to Razom for Ukraine, an organization that is raising funds for portable heat and power sources for Ukrainians, many of whom are now without power.
Tickets are $15 for general admission and $10 for students and seniors with ID.
The "gifted and talented pianist" (San Francisco Chronicle), who was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, will play select works from "Invasion," including the West Coast premiere of "Piano Suite No. 1" by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan. First half will end with CPP Music Department chair and composer David Kopplin's "Variations on a Ukrainian Lullaby" for toy piano, toy percussion, and voice. In the second half Dr. Shpachenko will play the World Premiere of Bill Alves' "Bad Attitude" for 5 pianos with her Cal Poly Pomona Piano Ensemble (Caitlin Yang, Edmund Banuelos, Daniel Klein, and Evan Huang) and the composer conducting, and the West Coast premieres of 4 new pieces written for her upcoming soccer-inspired GOAT project by Christopher Cerrone, Tom Flaherty, Oliver Dubon, and CPP Music Professor Evan Ware. "Invasion" was described as the "outstanding contemporary-music disc of the year" by Fanfare magazine.
Shpachenko turned to music making as a way to deal with the horror of watching Kharkiv and the rest of Ukraine being destroyed and citizens killed after Russian forces invaded on Feb. 24. She commissioned Ukrainian artists to create paintings and other artworks to use in the album booklet, online, for in-person galleries and the accompanying music videos. Many of the original paintings will be displayed on stage during the concert.
The title piece on the "Invasion" album is Spratlan's response to the tragic war. Spratlan and Shpachenko are longtime collaborators. The CD was released by Reference Recordings.
Shpachenko won a Grammy Award in 2020 for Best Classical Compendium for her album "The Poetry of Places." She was previously nominated for the 58th Grammy Awards for her debut Reference Recordings CD "Woman at the New Piano: American Music of 2013" in the category for the Best Classical Compendium and Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance categories. That album and "The Poetry of Places" were also nominated for Producer of the Year, Classical.
More Information on the CD can be found on the Reference Recordings website. Visit tix.com to purchase tickets.
*This story has been updated to reflect the rescheduled performance date.
