Winners announced for Envision Sound film score composers programme
Six projects—the most every in the history of the Envision Sound programme—will be awarded grants by the British Council and the Dovzhenko National Centre for the creation of musical accompaniment for Ukrainian films.
During the week of 20-24 January 2020, the Envision Sound programme took nine emerging filmscore composers from Ukraine, Turkey, Northern Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan and Serbia and placed them under the instruction of Enrica Sciandrone, composer and professor at the Royal College of Music, London. This year, for the first time in the programme’s history, the creative lab offered workshoppers the chance to record a portion of their composition for the screen at the soundstage of Ukrainian Radio accompanied by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra. Ukrainian composer Alla Zahaykevych served as curator of the project.
"Envision Sound is like a marathon where you have to write some music today, record it with an orchestra tomorrow and the day after that score it to the film you wrote it for in order to present it. It’s a real mind game; seeing your imagination materialise before you in the blink of an eye. I felt like I got an entire musical education in a week’s time.” Ilya Odegov, Envision Sound participant.
At the close of the intensive week of training, lectures and workshops, Envision Sound mentor and instructors Enrica Sciandrone, Alla Zahaykevych and Igor Stetsiuk went to work evaluating that their students had produced to accompany the contemporary and classic film segments the organisers had selected for the competition. From what they heard, the team chose the six prize winners.
Composers receiving grants to create soundtracks for films drawn from the Dovzhenko Centre Archives and financial support to perform their work at the Mute Nights Festival of Silent Film and Contemporary Music in June 2020. These are:
- Başar Ünder (Turkey)
- Eugene Latsko (Ukraine)
- Ilya Odegov (Kazakhstan)
- Martin Danchev (North Macedonia)
An additional two composers will be mentored by Enrica Sciandrone and receive grants to complete composition works-in-progress submitted to the programme for film projects by emerging Ukrainian filmmakers. These are:
- David Mastìkosa (Bosnia and Herzegovina) for the musical score to Polina Moshnska’s documentary “The Greek Wife”.
- Vardan Harutyunyan (Armenia), for the musical accompaniment to Maria Stoyanova’s documentary “Fragments of Ice”.