Cutting Keys - Bandura'The Forbidden Instrument''

CUTTING KEYS PRESENTS
BANDURA: THE FORBIDDEN INSTRUMENTA piano-led concert in Taylor Higgs live series with Ukrainian bandurist and singer Mariia Petrovska. For this edition, the bandura is the showcase piece.A percentage of ticket sales will be donated to Ukrainian Children SOS, chosen by Mariia.ABOUT CUTTING KEYSCreated by Taylor, a Southend-on-Sea pianist and London College of Music alumnus, Cutting Keys is centred on the grand piano. The series is shaped by the music he wants to perform, the musicians he wants to work with, and the instruments he wants audiences to encounter in a live setting.THE BANDURAThe bandura is one of Ukraines most distinctive traditional instruments. Modern instruments often have 55 to 65-plus strings, giving them a wide range and a sound with the resonance of a harp, the intimacy of a lute and the bright, ringing quality of a zither.
Its roots are linked to the kobza, an older Ukrainian lute-like instrument with fewer strings. Over time, the bandura developed into a larger and more complex instrument, with additional strings placed across the body to create the fuller sound associated with todays concert bandura.KOBZARS, REPERTOIRE AND RESISTANCETo understand the banduras place in Ukrainian culture, it helps to begin with the kobzars. These were travelling singer-musicians, often blind, who moved between towns and villages with the kobza or bandura. Their repertoire included dumy, Cossack histories, religious verses, psalms, laments, moral songs and songs of freedom, placing them somewhere between performer, chronicler and keeper of communal memory.
Because that repertoire held Ukrainian language, faith, national feeling and historical witness in public performance, it was never politically neutral. Under imperial Russian and Soviet rule, kobzar practice was controlled, censored or suppressed; it preserved loyalties and stories that sat outside official state narratives.
That context gives Bandura: The Forbidden Instrument its meaning. The title points to an instrument associated not only with beauty of sound, but with belief, resistance, grief and identity all expressed through a tradition powerful enough to be feared.MARIIA PETROVSKAMariia is a bandura player and singer whose work spans competition performance, theatre, broadcast and cultural work for Ukraine. A multi-time winner of all-Ukrainian and international bandurist competitions, she performs traditional Ukrainian repertoire as both vocalist and instrumentalist.After Russias full-scale invasion, she left Ukraine to live in the UK and is currently studying songwriting and performance at BIMM Manchester. She continues to perform Ukrainian music in the UK and in support of Ukrainian cultural work, leads the volunteer organisation Peoples Territory of Happiness, and is a major contributor to the Cultural Forces programme.In summer 2023, Mariia travelled to the east of Ukraine, close to the war zone, where she performed for Ukrainian defenders and appeared in a fundraising video that went viral on YouTube. She has also performed at Eurovision Village in Liverpool, recorded a song for a BBC broadcast about Ukraine, and appeared to great acclaim at Londons Finborough Theatre.Presented in a 450-capacity concert hall, this event reflects the idea behind Cutting Keys: to create one-off, non-repeating events, preserved in memory and time.