The Takeaway: Refugee Orchestra Project

WNYC

New York, NY

Lidiya Yankovskaya is a conductor and music director of the Chicago Opera Theater, one of the few women to hold that title at a major arts organization. She's also a former refugee. Raised in Russia, with summers in Ukraine, her family fled St. Petersburg in the post-Soviet Reconstruction era due to anti-semitism there and came to the United States. She founded the Refugee Orchestra Project in the wake of the Syrian conflict to raise awareness about the contributions refugees make.

This Memorial Day Weekend, the orchestra will play a special benefit concert in Boston to raise funds for Ukrainian refugees. The performance will feature all refugee soloists, performing music by refugee composers, with an orchestra made up primarily of refugee and immigrant musicians or recent descendants.  We speak with Yankovskaya and composer Milad Yousufi about the project.