Updated July 27, 2026 at 2:11 PM CDT
The fast-rising conductor Dalia Stasevska grew up in Finland, but her heart is in Ukraine.
"I have roots there because my father is a Ukrainian immigrant," Stasevska tells Morning Edition's A Martínez." He took care to teach me the Ukrainian language, the culture and history and I became proud of my Ukrainian heritage." Stasevska has poured that pride into a new album recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, titled Ukrainian Mixtape.
From the BBC in London, where she conducted the opening night concert at the summer Proms festival, Stasevska tells Martínez how she came to make the album and her experience driving supplies to the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
A Martínez: This album is something of a deep cuts collection of Ukrainian composers. Was that your mission?
Dalia Stasevska: Since I knew that Ukrainian music isn't known to the wider public, I wanted to do an introduction to as many composers as I could, but not too overwhelmingly. I thought, "Why don't I make a small window, an introduction, into a larger world." And that's why I wanted to find short pieces that would have immediate appeal and would show the wide range of music and composers. And you could playlist them on Spotify and Apple Music, or wherever, and share them with friends.
Helping Ukrainian identity and heritage remain vibrant — considering the threat Ukraine has been under with Russia — it sounds like this is something very important to you.
It's really alarming. For example, the recent month, I think, has been the deadliest of the whole war for civilians. There are bombings every day in Kyiv, and 20 people die in their sleep and it doesn't even make the news. It really makes you sad and worried. And of course, with this kind of project, you want to fight for coverage — that people don't forget about Ukraine and the incredible culture. And to be honest, it's all about culture. If there's no culture, there's no nation. So this front-line fighting for culture is really important. And for us outside Ukraine, we can help by playing Ukrainian music.
I read that you drove vans with supplies into Ukraine during the war. Were you scared for your life?
It's funny how when you drive into a war zone, how quickly it becomes normal for you.
I think it was one month into the war when we drove our first car with supplies. We knew that this is a matter of life and death for Ukraine, that this time it's so serious and we just can't watch from the side. It was around five months into the war and I was in Lviv. That was a little safer at that time, but of course everyday there were funerals. And on the main market square, you could see, every day, new buses loading new young men, older men. It was heartbreaking to see this contrast of life and death.
How did you choose which composers to include on your album?
It took me over a year to put these five pieces and composers together. I got in touch with a musicologist. And I explained that I was looking for more traditional repertoire, short pieces. And I have to underline that most of the Ukrainian composers were not professionally published. So it might take half a year to find the music. It might be with a family, it might be at some philharmonic or it might be abroad somewhere. So there was a lot of research done.
I looked through many pieces and started to realize what kind of styles I wanted. I also wanted to make like a story, a drama, inside the recording. So I have slow pieces with more depth and lighter ones and more celebratory pieces.
And then in Finland, at the Turku Music Festival, we had a test run. We did a concert with only Ukrainian music and all these pieces were performed because I needed to make sure they sounded good. We played them and everybody was just like, "Oh my God." So I immediately called my wonderful recording label, Platoon, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
The album starts with a very rousing overture by Levko Kolodub, almost a call to action, very cinematic. I hope you don't take this the wrong way — I mean it as a compliment — but it sounds a little like a John Williams' Star Wars grand entrance.
I completely agree! This is, by the way, its premiere recording. When I saw this music on paper I thought, "Wow, it's so cinematic." Even the end of the piece, it could be the ending of any Hollywood movie. It really blew my mind. And when I heard it for the first time in rehearsals, everybody was just like, "Why haven't we heard about this piece?" It makes such a tremendous opener to any concert.
Why do you think these composers were neglected in the West? Or were they even neglected in Ukraine as well?
It's due to the tragic Ukrainian history — 350 years of systematic destroying of the culture. They existed, but they were not promoted. Also, so many Ukrainian composers died in prisons, or they were imprisoned for 20 years. There are a lot of horrible stories. For example, composer Mykola Lysenko on this recording. He never heard his opera Taras Bulba fully performed because he demanded it be sung in its original Ukrainian language, and the Russians forbade it. But the composers existed despite the obstacles. After Ukrainian independence in 1991, there were so many problems. It takes years for people to heal after such an oppression.
I hope that this recording is a part of that [healing], that the Ukrainians can stand even taller on their own feet and be proud of their heritage and their culture. And we can all be a part of that, giving them the voice and spotlight they deserve.
Tom Huizenga produced the digital version of this story.
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