1991 Project

The 1991 Project is a Paris-based initiative that aims to explore and popularize unknown or rarely performed repertoire and to discover and support new talents. The project’s core principles are social entrepreneurship and feminist leadership. The 1991 Project is led by Anna Stavychenko, a scholar in musicology, opera critic, and classical music curator, former executive director of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Harriman Resident of the Institute for Ideas & Imagination from Columbia University during the season 2022-2023. The main focus of the project is the rich Ukrainian musical repertoire from classicism to the present day in its connections to the Western European and North American cultural trends, as well as endangered artists. The 1991 Project collaborates with the participants of the Philharmonie de Paris mission project that helps Ukrainian musicians exiled in France. Those musicians are some of the best performers in Ukraine, coming from the leading orchestras in the country. The 1991 Project curated unique events and concerts in prestigious places such as the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Low Library Rotunda of the University of Columbia in New York, and the Amphithéatre Richelieu in Sorbonne University in Paris, as well as the Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc in Reid Hall, which hosts most of our concerts. The project’s musicians participated in music festivals throughout France and notably collaborated with internationally renowned artists such as Henri Demarquette, Askar Ishangaliyev or Magdalena Baczewska. Another component of the 1991 Project's activities is the research and preservation of Ukrainian scores that were never published, poorly preserved or destroyed. They are then made accessible to orchestras and ensembles such as the Orchestre de Paris, Sinfonia Varsovia, the Orchestre National d'Île-de-France, the Orchestre Colonne, and to soloists such as Jean-Guihen Queyras.