Mariana Sadovska/Vesna

Eastern European critics call her the ”Ukrainian Bjork”. In her energetic programmes, Mariana Sadovska – singer, actress and composer - creates a fusion of folk and avant-garde; archaic midsummer night invocations, wedding songs and emigrant chants from remote villages in rural Ukraine are transfigured into contemporary sound.

Creating her own innovative compositions and arrangements in dialogue with ancient traditions, Mariana approaches each piece with a fresh and uniquely personal vision. Her vocal power and range even prompted the New York Times to compare her with rock star Polly Jean Harvey.

"Long before Dakh Daughters arose to great acclaim with their irrepressibly wanton, avant gardist take on madly askew Cabaret, long before DakhaBrakha broke through with their daringly innovatory mix of ancient tradition and hyper-contemporary experiment...—or any number of other Ukrainian artists who have trod down paths of a similar ilk, Mariana Sadovska marked herself off as the pioneering Ukrainian artist who opened up all these trajectories in the first place." http://www.musicofukraine.com/BestoftheBest2.html

Vesna (meaning Spring in Ukrainian) is a cross-cultural musical project by Mariana Sadovska, Christian Thomé, Matthias Kurth, and Markus Braun. Blending poetry, melodies, and improvisation, Vesna is an “acoustic east-western road movie” exploring themes of love, death, despair, hope, and the search for freedom and identity.
With voice and drums at its core, the ensemble expands their sound through shamanic echoes, urban rhythms, and instruments ranging from jew’s harps and harmonium to zither and electronics. Rooted in Ukrainian song traditions and enriched by Western urban influences, Vesna creates a futuristic sonic landscape — a powerful dialogue between cultures and a universal expression of belonging and future. https://www.vesna.band/

Born in Lviv, Ukraine, Mariana Sadovska trained as a classical pianist at Lviv Stanislaw Liudkevych State Music College and in her late teens joined the Les’ Kurbas Theatre, one of Ukraine’s leading theater companies. From 1991 to 2001, Mariana worked as a principal actress, composer, and music director at the Teatr Gardzienice in Poland. Gardzienice is renowned for its original “anthropological-experimental” performances based on years of field work studying ancient cultures in isolated rural areas of the world. With Gardzienice, Ms. Sadovska traveled throughout Eastern and Western Europe as well as to Brazil, Egypt, Japan, the UK, and the United States, appearing and in some cases co-creating the company’s productions. In 1998, for her role in “Metamorfozy,” she won the “Best Actress Award” given by the Polish Theatre Union. As the musical director of the Gardzienice Theatre, Ms. Sadovska conducted numerous workshops at colleges, universities and arts centers around the world, including one with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, UK.