As Ukraine grieves for its “heavenly hundred,” the victims of the violent standoffs between protesters and police in January and February, music helps keep up the spirits at EuroMaidan.
A piano was installed at Khreshchatyk Street many weeks ago, and dozens of volunteers conducted performances since then.
But one young pianist stood out.
He was always dressed in a black military uniform, a bullet-proof vest with his face covered with a balaclava showed up every day to make a terrific piano performance and gather a crowd of admirers. The man refused to give his full name, calling himself the “piano extremist” and never removing his balaclava. His extraordinary look and his secrecy have made him a top EuroMaidan celebrity.
“It is still a long way to the victory and no reason to be happy yet,” piano extremist wrote on his Facebook page on Feb. 23 after the ousting of former president Viktor Yanukovych. “But I am safe and alive and am going to play near City Hall now to honor our slaughtered fellows.”
And so he did. With a pile of music notes in his hands he sits at the piano near City Hall building, once occupied by protesters, to start playing.
Piano extremist is a 25-year-old man who refuses to identify himself any other way except as Bohdan. He says he has been playing piano since the age of eight. Before the EuroMaidan revolution kicked off, he was giving music lessons but rarely played himself.
“In the last five years I gave up on playing, I thought no one needs that, but I changed my mind completely,” he smiles and adds that at EuroMaidan he has seen how music changes people’s lives.
The piano extremist and joined the classical music movement at EuroMaidan several weeks after the first piano appeared at Khreshchatyk, but soon became the brightest EuroMaidan performer.
“When our revolution is over I am going to travel the world and perform in the countries where people fight for their freedom,” he says.
The piano movement kicked off on Dec. 6, when young musician and civic activist Markiyan.
Matsyk played a first piano concert in front of riot police rows on Bankova Street.
The photo of a musician playing for the police was reposted by Sean Lennon and went viral.
“I actually think that this is where the whole EuroMaidan piano movement has started, from this photo,” says Oleh Matsyk, Markiyan’s father and one of the founders of the street pianos movement.
The first Ukraine’s street pianos appeared in Lviv before EuroMaidan, Matsyk says, but it is revolution that made the initiative so popular. “The idea was taken over by activists in the regions and street pianos appeared in Lviv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhya,” he said.
Now even several villages want to join the initiative that is sometimes called “The Instrument of Freedom.”
Only once, in Luhansk, the street piano performers were met with aggression, Matsyk recalls. A group of unidentified people tried to crash blue and yellow piano.
Yuriy Zhukovskiy, a member of Democratic Alliance and an organizer of the street piano movement in Zhytomyr says protest opponents never touched the piano in his city. “Of course we chained the instrument so people wouldn’t move it around, but that was all,” he says.
Unlike in Kyiv there are no regular performers in the regions. “Whoever passes by can sit and play,” Zhukovskiy says.
The culmination of EuroMaidan piano movement happened on Feb. 10, when the piano was brought to the top of the barricade on Hrushevskoho Street, where the first deadly clashes took place.
“This is symbolic that we put this piano in this place – the place of the bloodshed, as music is a symbol of non-violent resistance,” says Volodymyr Viatrovych of EuroMaidan Civic Sector, one of the piano movement organizers.
One of the pianists performing that day was a 12-year old Luka Volodin, who played Bach’s Invention.
“I do this not to get practice, as I’m already an experienced performer. I want to support the EuroMaidan protest with all my heart,” the boy said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
