TWS President Cutuli attended the "Raising Voices for Ukraine" solidarity concert organized by the American Embassy at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. The event featured performances by Italian and American artists to raise funds for humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Under the artistic direction of American conductor Timothy Martin, the concert opened with the great gospel choir directed and founded by Martin himself in 2005, the Amazing Grace Gospel Choir, named after one of the oldest and most popular gospel songs in African American musical tradition. A symbol of the struggle for freedom born in the Southern United States and then spread throughout the world, gospel music conveyed a sense of communion and warmth through the nearly fifty voices of its chorus members and soloist Amii Stewart, the great American singer well known to the Italian audience. From gospel the music transitioned to jazz, with the Arnautov Quartet, founded by Andrew Arnautov, a musician and composer of Ukrainian and American origin, performing a jazz composition by Arnautov himself followed by a second piece inspired by traditional Ukrainian folk music. Anastasiia Batih and Liubov Kardash, two Ukrainian musicians living in Italy and winners of numerous international awards, immersed the audience in the sweet traditional sounds through the bandura, a Ukrainian folk plucked string instrument that is a cross between a lute and zither, with varying numbers of strings plucked exclusively with a plectrum. The concert continued with the Virtuosi of Kyiv, an internationally renowned chamber orchestra of thirty Ukrainian musicians who have resided in Chieti, Abruzzo since 2022. Founded in 2016 to promote the cultural heritage of classical music worldwide, they performed three pieces of haunting melancholy, before joining the other musicians, singers and gospel choir in choral works that concluded the event, conducted by composer and orchestra director Dario Vero.