You're reading: An ex-pat conductor with a mission

Roger McMurrin, musician and head of Music Mission Kiev, looks back at more than a decade in Ukraine

Roger McMurrin, the orchestral and choral conductor who heads Music Mission Kiev, had no idea what this interview was going to be about. He didn’t know about “10 Years in Kyiv,” because he doesn’t read the Kyiv Post anymore.

“I used to read the Kyiv Post and What’s On, but the escort advertisements are so terrible. It’s a crime… These ‘boys for man’ ads: they are so atrocious that it really hurts. I used to buy ads in the Kyiv Post and had a good relationship, but now with those ads it so difficult for us. You just don’t want to see that,” he says.

Back in the summer of 1992, when he first visited Ukraine to give a concert, there were no escort service ads in local newspapers. There weren’t any decent papers for that matter, nor even lights on the street at night.

“The streets were dark. After rehearsal you would go to Kreshchatyk to buy a bottle of Coke or some ice cream and nothing was open. Those were very dark days, not only physically, but emotionally.”

Until then McMurrin, 66, had lived a happy and successful life back in the United States. In sunny Orlando, Florida, he directed music at the city’s First Presbyterian Church. Before that, in Dallas, he had been the music director of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church. And before that, he had served as a music director at Famous Coral Ridge Presbyterian for 16 years in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But McMurrin was soon to trade Southern sunshine for Kyiv. In 1991, an Episcopal priest named George McCammon, also from Florida, invited him to play Handel’s “Messiah” with Ukrainian musicians. McCammon had come to Ukraine as a missionary in 1991, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, and had started a mission and school here.

“I wanted to do a little bit of the Caribbean for my holiday. I needed a break, and he said, ‘Why don’t you come to Kyiv?’ I hardly knew where it was. Mussorgsky’s ‘The Great Gates of Kiev’ from ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ – that’s all I knew,” says McMurrin.

Initially, he didn’t feel like making the trip. But after a week, his feelings changed, and he started planning to come with his wife Diane and their younger son Matthew.

On his five-week first visit here, McMurrin gave two major concerts in the House of Organ and Chamber Music, playing Schubert, Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, and the contemporary English composer John Rutter. Local musicians and singers were involved in the performances.

“It was an explosion of light in 1992,” he remembers.

On the plane trip back to the States, he had an epiphany.

“I had had an experience that I felt I promised God that I’d move to Ukraine,” he says. But he was reluctant to tell his wife. “You can talk to God, but you cannot talk to your wife like that.”

Later, he found out she had had the same thought herself.

“That made my job a lot easier,” he laughs.

The journey begins

“We didn’t know much about Ukraine. We just knew we had to come here,” says McMurrin, describing his family’s return to Ukraine in the summer of 1993.

Initially, upon returning, the couple wasn’t quite sure what they should do. McMurrin directed a few concerts as a conductor, and he and Diane taught English, history and music theory at Kyiv’s St. Andrew’s Preparatory School. All the money they had they spent on hiring musicians for the concerts, but it was rewarding, he says.

“I was paying them a dollar a day in 1993. It was pretty good at that time, when teachers and doctors were getting six dollars a month [as a salary], so I got good musicians, the best of them. They were geniuses.”

“We did the Brahms’ ‘Requiem’ in October. Every concert was an anshlag [full house]. Ours was the first public performance of Brahms’ ‘Requiem’ in 70 years. In December we did a Christmas carol concert and people didn’t even know when Christmas was.”

After a few months, McMurrin and his family ran out of money and had to go back to the States.

“We were broke. We’ve spent everything we had. By December [1993], we had $16 left.”

“We went home and told people our story. They gave us more money and we came back. And we’ve been here now for 13 years,” says McMurrin of how Music Mission Kiev started.

The first donations for the mission, which helps maintain the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Chorus – the first private orchestra in Ukraine – came from friends and relatives. But soon the number of people helping out grew, and now the mission has more than 3,500 donors from the States, and collects about $1 million a year. The money allows Music Mission to maintain the orchestra, which consists of musicians from various state collectives in Kyiv. The group regularly gives concerts in Kyiv. Together the 160 musicians also tour the United States – they have played 300 concerts in 45 states.

“Ninety-five percent of the money comes from individuals. People come to our concerts and want to invest in our work,” McMurrin explains.

He says he has a database of 23,000 people around the United States who have helped Music Mission in some way, including hosting musicians during tours of the U.S.

Creating God’s temple

Soon after the start of 1994, McMurrin – who had been a devoted Christian for years – founded a Presbyterian church for his musicians and became its pastor. It is now called the Church of the Holy Trinity and has over 500 members.

“When I came here everybody who I worked with were either atheists or agnostics. I didn’t have one believer in 1993. Many of the works we’ve sung are from the Holy Scriptures…So our people became Christians and they wanted to start their own church.”

McMurrin was the pastor at the church for over four years, but has since returned to music and mission activities. Besides the orchestra, these include several charity undertakings, like feeding and supporting 400 widows on a weekly basis, and taking care of their medical needs. The mission also supports 25 teenage orphans, provides pensions for its retired musicians, coordinates humanitarian aid coming into Ukraine, and organizes Bible studies in orphanages and public schools.

“We’ll take care of them until they can be on their own,” McMurrin says. “Our goal is that they get a good education. Our goal is that they get a good job, become good Christians. Ninety percent of them come from alcoholic families,” he adds, describing his recent ministry with teenage orphans.

“The [Orange] Revolution helped us to raise money, and it will help us to raise more in the future,” says McMurrin, adding that recently he got together representatives of all seven Christian confessions in Ukraine to celebrate President Viktor Yushchenko’s 100th day in power.

Family business

Music Mission takes up lots of the McMurrin family’s energy. McMurrin runs the orchestra, while his wife Diane supervises the work with the widows and orphans, handles communications and writes books. So far, she has written two, both about the couple’s experiences in Kyiv: “The Splendor of His Music” and “The Drama of Music Mission Kiev.”

Until recently their younger son Matthew, 27, was the director of the mission’s Youth Orchestra. A few months ago he moved back to the States to work as a music director in Richmond, Virginia. McMurrin’s older son Mark, 33, runs Music Mission’s office in Orlando, Florida.

As for McMurrin, he has no plans to return to Florida.“This is my home,” he says. “There is nothing to go home to in the United States: I own nothing there… we have everything we need here in Ukraine.”