ABOUT THE CHOIR AND THE DIRECTOR

Ensemble Cherubim is a choir of American singers with an interest in Ukrainian music and offering performances of Ukrainian repertoire in the greater context of international music. Many of the singers in Ensemble Cherubim are alumni of the University of California, Berkeley, and sang in its prestigious Chamber Chorus under the direction of Philipp Brett, John Butt, and Marika Kuzma. They are passionate choral artists from across America.

In 2011, Ensemble Cherubim first came together in San Francisco to create a recording for the Naxos International label: Dmitry Bortniansky, I Cried Out to the Lord: Hymns and Choral Concertos. The CD was engineered by the famous Marta DeFrancisco and gained critical acclaim as a dynamic reimagining of Bortniansky’s music.

In 2021, still in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Ensemble Cherubim gathered to perform “An Anglo-Ukrainian Christmas” with concerts in New Haven, CT and at the Ukrainian-American Institute in New York City. The program juxtaposed Ukrainian, British, and American carols and included poetry recitation and story-telling. The Ukrainian-American vocal artist Vira Slywotzky performed poetry by Lesia Ukrainka, and British film director Jonathan Lynn read from A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

In 2022, in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine, Ensemble Cherubimgathered on June 12 in Berkeley, California, to perform in the biannual Berkeley Festival and Exhibition. In 2023, the ensemble has been invited to offer a concert called "Sacred Land: Songs and Poems of Resilience from Ukraine" as part of the prestigious New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas (June 25), with a repeat performance in Washington, DC at the St. John Paul II Shrine (June 26).

Music and creative director Marika Kuzma is a musician, actor, and music scholar. She has directed choirs in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Grace Cathedral, Kyevo-Mohylanska Akademia, Vienna Stephansdom, Zellerbach Hall. She has appeared onstage at Berkeley Rep, Marin Shakespeare Company, La Mama Theater, and HB Studios. Her research in Russian and Ukrainian music has been published by prestigious journals, and her edition of Bortniansky choral concertos was published by Carus Verlag. She has given invited talks at the Kyiv, Moscow conservatories and across America. Kuzma directed choirs at the University of California, Berkeley, for many years and has guest directed Cappella Romana, the Montreal Symphony Chorus, Oakland Symphony Chorus, among others.

Even in the monastery cave,

the hermits…turned their faces up

towards an iron grille, and raised

their voices, sighing, pulsing,

surging away from damp walls…

From “Singing Underground” by Sheila Bonenberger written April, 2022