Zozulka Trio’s cycle of old Ukrainian and Yiddish songs represents my latest attempt to bridge my profiles as a practicing musician and scholar. Since late 2025, Eva, Willa and I have been researching and working on arrangements of various songs, with the support of Yiddish song masters Michael Alpert and Ethel Raim, and drawing on the earlier mentorship of Yevhen Yefremov and Mariana Sadovska. The project launched in the fall of 2026 with a run of six performances in California. Over the course of the 55 minute song cycle, Eva, Willa, and I sing fourteen songs in a range of styles and arrangements, accompanied by live projections provided by a number of our artist friends: Elizabeth LaPrelle, Oksana Hawrylak, Nana Tchitchoua, Darya Tsymbalyuk, Lilah Friedland, with additional motion animation by Madeleine Woods. The visuals also include a historic image (now in the public domain) from Taras Shevchenko.

To accompany the project, I created a website and wrote eight short essays about the songs, their contexts, links to source recordings, and the interpretive design of the cycle. You can access that at berezaberyoze.art.