Iryna Aleksiychuk Iryna Aleksiychuk

Aleksiychuk is a renowned Ukrainian pianist, composer and organist who teaches at the National Music University of Ukraine. She has won many international awards, including the Prokofiev National Competition for Young Composers in Donetsk, Ukraine; first prize at the first Khmelnytskyi Chamber Music Performers Competition in Ukraine; the 45th ARD International Music Competition in Munich; the 6th Murray Dranoff International Two Piano Competition; and the Ukrainian Composers' Competition. Aleksiychuk's early works were mainly symphonies, symphonic poems and instrumental pieces; from 1991 she shifted genres and began writing for a cappella mixed choir, reaching a creative peak in 2000. Her texts are drawn from a wide range of sources, from the Psalms of David and biblical texts to folk songs of the Balkan Peninsula, and she fuses words and music to vivid effect. She has written six a cappella works for mixed choir in succession, among which “The Breath of Time” (時間的氣息) is a representative work expressing a meditative vision.