Ukraine youth choir gives freedom message

The Shchedryk youth choir performs a Christmas concert at Copenhagen’s Church of the Holy Spirit. Pic/AP

From a dank Kyiv bomb shelter to the bright stage lights of Europe's theatres, a Ukrainian youth choir's hymns in praise of freedom offer a kind of healing balm to its war-scarred members. The Shchedryk ensemble, described as Kyiv's oldest professional children's choir, were in the Danish capital this week for a performance, as part of an international tour that also took them to New York's famed Carnegie Hall.

It was part of a busy year to celebrate the choir's 50th anniversary. But Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine changed all that, with members scattering inside their homeland and abroad in search of safety. Some members say they have lost friends and family in the fighting.

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"It is very difficult to gather the children," said Marianna Sablina, the choir's artistic director and chief conductor, whose mother founded the choir in 1971. Some of the members are "outside the borders of Ukraine, and only about a third of the forum currently live in Kyiv." Earlier this year, the choir managed to reassemble, and began rehearsing in Kyiv's National Palace of Arts.

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