Chamber concert to aid Ukraine
Staff pastor at Pilgrim Slavic Baptist Church in Spokane Vladimir Kronin (left) with Cellist Evgeny Grechko at the Music Conservatory of Coeur d'Alene. Grechko will be playing a concert April 8 with proceeds going to the Pilgrim church to help Ukrainians.
Photo courtesy of Vladimir Kronin
The first concert by the Music Conservatory of Coeur d'Alene's Chamber Series featured a woodwind quintet at First Presbyterian Church, Coeur d'Alene. The Second performance will be at the same location, but proceeds will go to the Pilgrim Slavic Baptist Chruch of Spokane to benefit Ukrainians. The church does mission work and takes donations for a specific Ukraine fund to provide assistance in the war effort.
The Music Conservatory of Coeur d’Alene will have the second concert of its Chamber Series, this one to benefit Ukraine, at 7:30 p.m. April 8 in the First Presbyterian Church, Coeur d’Alene.
“It’s going to be an excellent concert,” said Executive Director Julienne Dance. “All the music that they are doing is super amazing, it’s music you don’t hear all the time.”
The concert will feature the debut performance of the new chorale program’s youth choir.
Chamber music director James Sullivan will play the clarinet, and featured artists Nursulu Dyikanbaeva will play piano and Evgeny Grechko will play cello, playing pieces from a range of composers, including Mozart.
The last piece of the performance, by Cymbala, will have a resurrection theme in celebration of Easter and the entire performance will be a benefit for people in Ukraine.
“The intensity of the war has really picked up, so we thought we really should offer the proceeds to Ukraine,” Dance said.
Grechko and Dyikanbaeva are both Ukrainian, and it felt important and right to support the war effort, which the conservatory has also done in the past, Dance said.
“As a musician, to do anything to support those people who are suffering, it can be … compassionate,” said Grechko. “Last year’s performance was great, and the audience was very involved and supportive.”
Donations will go through the Pilgrim Slavic Baptist Church of Spokane, a congregation made up primarily of former Soviet Union countries, and roughly half of the congregation is Ukrainian.
“We totally support Ukraine, and I’m Ukrainian myself,” said staff pastor Vladimir Kronin. “We have partners that we know personally and some pastors of churches who feed people or provide various types of aid in Ukraine.”
The church has a deep network in Ukraine from years of missionary work and outreach. Its congregation has already raised more than $46,000 for its Ukrainian fund in the last year, and as of Feb. 8 it has spent $41,532 on supporting Ukrainians.
Donations cover anything from church events, kids camps, supporting transportation vans for handicap visitation or paying for gas.
“My response to our community, we really feel being supported in this regard – as far as help in Ukraine and being Ukrainian,” Kronin said. “We really see a lot of people wanting to help our community.”
The Slavic community in the church and the region have come together through the year of war to support Ukrainians, and there’s still so much of a need, Kronin said. They have no trouble finding people who need help.
“A lot of my friends and my colleagues have lost their homes, everything,” Grechko said. “As a musician, I just wanted to give support.”
