Voices of Refuge

Chicago Opera Theater +
Refugee Orchestra Project

Chicago, IL

“Chicago Opera Theater teamed up with the Refugee Orchestra Project to offer four performances overlooking Lincoln Park this past weekend, two performances each on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the Chicago History Museum’s Uihlein Plaza. Matching up these two groups was natural to Lidiya Yankovskaya, as she holds leadership roles in both: she is music director of COT and artistic director of ROP. Yankovskaya gathered a solid roster of instrumentalists — together they made up a taut ensemble and performed a wide variety of music with flair and intensity.

The works together created an intriguing and worthwhile hour of music for listeners, who were seated in “bubbles,” a group of chairs (typically two) significantly separated from other bubbles, with all listeners required to wear masks. The audience for each performance was capped at 100, but when I attended the second Saturday afternoon performance, I couldn’t help but notice folks in the park beyond the plaza. They stopped to take in the concert from afar with smiles of appreciation or looks of great concentration on their faces.

Yankovskaya led her small ensemble in a memorable performance. The ensemble’s controlled sound allowed [Mutalifu] to let soar some lovely high notes that floated beautifully in the scent of flowers and grass. The first movement of Donizetti’s String Quartet No. 18 was pert even as the string foursome dueled with the singing cicadas surrounding us all…. The dance elements always came to the fore, and the joyful lightness of touch was pleasing and the energy was infectious. It was a well-designed program of music which left the small crowd happy and content.”
–M.L. Rantala, Hyde Park Herald