VOGUE Ukraine
Philanthropist Tetiana Verevska established a fund to support young musicians and discover new Ukrainian names on the international academic scene.
Once a month, “open” auditions take place in the center of Kyiv in a chamber hall near Maidan Nezalezhnosti, bringing together young musicians who will soon be the talk of the town. In 2022, the 11-year-old pianist Savva Zolotarov came to the hub, a charming curly-haired boy who captivated the VERE MUSIC FUND team, received an invitation to play on the stage, and then, with the support of the fund, attended a series of master classes in Ukraine and abroad and in 2023 won the first prize at the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart International Competition in Austria.
Two years later, Savva is preparing for his debut at the National Philharmonic, where he will perform Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with the symphony orchestra. Although the creator of the fund, Tetiana Verevska, says that this is a merit of the 12-year-old artist who “works exceptionally hard,” it is worth recognizing that it is much easier to move forward when you have access to rehearsal spaces, quality instruments, the opportunity to travel to competitions, and the understanding that you are not alone.
Tetiana Verevska calls VERE MUSIC FUND her life mission. Our communication is via Skype – Tetiana is currently in Switzerland. Together with her family (her husband is Andrii Verevskyi, co-owner of the Kernel agricultural holding – Ed. note), she lives in two countries. I am looking at a beautiful, confident woman, a mother of two sons and a daughter, a person passionate about her trade. For Verevska, who spent her entire childhood and adolescence at a music school and could have become a professional violinist but chose a different path, music is a love and a hobby. She recalls with a smile how, at the age of 14, she joined the Kyiv Children’s Symphony Orchestra, where she played for two years. “We performed at the Philharmonic and the Ukraina Palace, and I adored it, because it’s a special feeling when you’re part of something big.”
Tetiana Verevska was educated as a musicologist, but she has never worked in the profession. In the mid-1990s, she joined the Kyiv office of the British agency Saatchi & Saatchi, where she worked her way up from account manager to director. She launched the fund in 2017, having been thinking about the idea for three years – “We wanted to do something useful for musicians and agreed that the most important thing was to promote the development of the music environment.”
Verevska speaks about the work of VERE MUSIC FUND as an operations director, as she is so deeply immersed in the process. “For a musician to progress, one needs constant training and participation in international competitions, which are the main means of building a career: performers are noticed and offered jobs there, – she tells. – But most Ukrainians do not have this opportunity, because participation in competitions is expensive. That is why we provide grants”. The Fund’s mission is to make sure that Ukraine is represented on global music platforms. A striking example is the International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Volodymir Horowitz, which was held in Kyiv for ten years in a row and in 2023 was held at the Geneva Conservatory with the support of the World Federation of International Music Competitions. At that time, thanks to the VERE MUSIC FUND initiative, dozens of musicians from Ukraine were able to showcase themselves on the international stage.
The Fund is excellent at lighting new stars. “We often get calls from orchestras in Lviv, Kharkiv or Odesa, saying, ‘We want to play this piece, which soloists do you recommend? It’s a great opportunity for young musicians to perform on a big stage with a symphony orchestra.”
One such name is the 30-year-old pianist Dmytro Choni, who is now a European star with dozens of concerts a year from London to New York. In 2022, he won one of the world’s most prominent piano awards, a bronze medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in the United States. Dmytro was one of the first musicians the Fund started working with, giving him the opportunity to participate in competitions and master classes and move up in his career.
In the summer of 2022, Tetiana and her team opened their own chamber hall in the center of Kyiv. “VERE MUSIC HUB was one of the first halls to open in the Ukrainian capital after the Russian invasion. I saw the inspired faces of the people who came in. For the first week, we held concerts every day, and we had a terrible queue. People were sitting on the floor right next to the piano,” Verevska recalls. My friends in Switzerland asked me: What concerts, you’re at war? “I answered: yes, there is a war, but people continue to live, and they need some emotions other than fear and despair.”
Over the course of a year and a half, the hub hosted 80 concerts attended by over six thousand people. Tetiana affectionately calls this space a “hive.” “In the afternoon, before the concerts, every corner is occupied – there’s a piano, here a cello. We have two pianos, so the schedule is scheduled hourly. We made the young musicians who stayed in the country feel that there are people who will take care of them – provide a hall, instruments, audience, and mentoring support from their senior colleagues.”
Tetiana knows her mentees personally and follows their progress. She is proud to talk about a new star – the owner of a velvet bass-baritone, Vlad Buialskyi, who has been receiving grant support from the Fund since 2019. In 2019, at a music competition, he was noticed and offered training in the famous Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. In March 2022, Vlad, whose native Berdiansk is still occupied, took to the stage of the world’s most famous opera house and performed the Ukrainian anthem, and both the audience in the hall and those watching the online broadcast were in tears. A year later, this recording was nominated for a Grammy. “Such a leap from Berdiansk to New York is incredible,” Verevska says enthusiastically.
She is not inclined to romanticize the high-profile successes of her mentees: “It’s all thanks to hard work, they practice up to ten hours a day. Our task is to support them on this path.” Before the great war, she dreamed of introducing an alternative education system, and today she focuses on cooperation with foreign foundations and music academies, working on a mentoring program, and expanding the hub, as space for 120 people no longer accommodates everyone.
This interview with Vogue Ukraine marks Tetiana’s first public media appearance—a deliberate choice, as she typically avoids the spotlight. “I agreed to this conversation because I hope to inspire others to take initiative and contribute to society. If you have the means to help, you should.”
Photo: Vic Bakin / VOGUE
Text: Daria Slobodianyk / VOGUE
See the original interview text on the VOGUE website.