Glieriv Fest | Sarah Gait

Sarah Gait is delighted to be a collaborator of GlierivFest: a project of the R.Glier Kyiv Municipal Academy of Music, Ukraine, celebrating the music of monumental Ukrainian composer, Reinhold Glière.

GlierivFest, Kyiv:
celebrating 150 years since the birth of Reinhold Glière

Sarah Gait:

"2025 marks the 150th Anniversary of Reinhold Glière's birth. I first discovered Glière's charming and inventive set of character pieces for cello and piano, Album Leaves, when I presented a fundraising concert for the DEC Humanitarian Appeal for Ukraine with pianist Anna Han at St John's Smith Square, London (now Smith Square Hall), back in 2022.

" Since then, I am thrilled to have made contact both with the living family of Glière - including his great grand-nephew in Saxony, Germany - and also with the wonderful directorate at the R. Glier Kyiv Municipal Academy of Music.

"After recording a selection of Album Leaves in 2023 with pianist Parvis Hejazi in London, I was delighted to be invited to join the Glieriv Fest team and present a series of concerts across Europe in 2025, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Reinhold Glière's birth"

Glière's Legacy

Reinhold Glière was a monumental figure in Ukrainian music. Most of the significant Ukrainian composers since have been students of Glière, or students of his students, tracing a compositional family tree up to the present day.

For full details of the GlierivFest, Kyiv, please see:

https://projekt.glieracademy.org/glierfest/

More about the Glière family tree and his German relatives can be found here: https://www.schnadt-web.de/gliereng.htm

A voice for peace

"I am deeply honoured to be a voice for peace and a voice for the wonderful music of Ukraine. I pray for the time when we can together perform the music of Reinhold Glière and all his 'compositional descendants' in a once-more peaceful Kyiv."

~ Sarah Gait, Cellist and Presenter of GlierivFest concerts in Europe

Thanks are due to the wonderful staff at the R. Glier Kyiv Municipal Academy of Music for their collaboration, especially to Iryna Polstiankina, President of the International Charitable Fund of the Vladimir Horowitz Competition, for project inspiration, collaboration and some wonderful video meetings, and to Anna Yuferova (herself a Glière compositional descendant!) for immense assistance with research and musical scores.