The Melody Girls of Ukraine started in the year 2010 as a student choir in Kyiv / Ukraine.
The girls pop choir were all students with the Polytechnical University and were already singing in the university choir when the Melody Girls were formed.
Large girl pop choirs were, certainly in Ukraine, something rather special and the most important choir in this field was a Belgium choir with around 40 girls. This became the inspiration for the student choir to make a big choir of 25 girls and concentrated on real melody oriented pop music.
Inspired by this Belgian choir we decided to change the student choir into the Melody Girls of Ukraine and become a choir of 25 girls to sing pop hits from the sixties, based on melody and emotion.
The first year was filled with rehearsing under the conductor Ruslan Bondar, who was already attached to the University.
From the beginning there was a piano and arrangements were made especially for the Melody Girls. Later it was extended with a saxophone and a cello.
The choir started to get an identity and was eager to start giving concerts. And we found a very good place for our concerts, the MasterClass in the center of Kyiv.
We had successful years with 25 girls and slowly the choir transferred from a pure university choir to a more general choir and slowly we came to the conclusion that 25 girls were too many to make international trips and to do this was a dream of the choir.
It was then decided to reduce the choir to 12 girls and make 4 different voice levels and have 3 voices in each group.
Although the Melody Girls are hundred percent an amateur choir and the members give a lot of their free time to the choir, the level of performances went to almost a professional level.
Only the conductor and the musicians get a compensation for their involvement, which is logical as they must live from their music.
For a few years concerts wear given on a regular basis and the choir became very steady; in 2015 the choir made their first trip to Great Britain and The Netherlands and linked that to a full day in a recording studio to make their first CD. It was a very successful trip whereby for the first time a joined concert was given on invitation of the St. Edmund Male choir in Cambridge.
Also concerts were given with a Cambridge quintet and also here the combination was very successful. It turned out that joined concerts would be a promising concept for future trips, whereby the concert partner and the Melody Girls sing their own repertoire and also sing a number of songs together.
We decided to take this concept of concerts as our base for further trips.
After the international trip there were several concerts again in Kyiv and one very special performance was given for soldiers in their army camp. A very special and emotional event and afterwards the choir received a charter from the highest army officer to thank us for the fantastic afternoon.
The development of the choir cane to a standstill because of covid and did not get together for a few years. In 2021 when the situation improved somewhat we decided to go back for a short interval to 25 girls in Kyiv and again mainly students and the songs where put on Spotify to show we still existed.
And then the war; everything changed; some girls left the country and other went to their home villages to be safer from the attacks. But the spirit of the girls was unbroken and it was decided to come together again at the end of 2021 and start preparing for a trip to Great Britain which had been in the books for some time.
10 girls came together in 2023 in Kyiv to rehearse and 2 girls attended through zoom from outside of Ukraine. We found a new conductor and a new pianist although the existing pianist followed the choir out of Austria.
The choir survived and was motivated more than ever before. 12 girls again but not a student choir anymore and the girls became ladies as a number of them who started with us are still with us but 13 years older.
But we created again a very close group with a true mentality to be involved in music as they felt that music helps them survive the dark times. More motivated than ever and more professional than ever.
In 2023 the rehearsals started up again on a weekly basis. The perspective of the international trip to Great Britain in April / May 2024 ( depending on the war situation) is a great motivation. It will be very special as there will be two concerts in The Cavern in Liverpool together with the artist who performs regular in The Cavern.
Finding a new conductor of the desired quality was probably the most difficult task in the present times. After going through several possible solutions we decided to make a major change and started to work with two conductors.
We found a very experienced senior conductor who will have full responsibility for everything related to the music. Also the person organizes the working process of the choir, like accepting girls, number of rehearsals, discipline, arrangements and much more. Total responsibility. And therefore the function is : Director / senior conductor.
To be maximal flexible we also appointed a junior conduuctor who does the daily rehearsals. This combination gives the possiblity to have the quality we want and to have the safest rehearsal scheme possible.
For the girls it is a fantastis possiblity to develop themselves in a way that they hardly can do anywhere else.
A professional amateur choir is born.
The future for the Melody Girls will therefore be a further road to professionalism in order to draw the involvement of more and more lovers of our music and concerts.
Ambitions are there and the fact that the Melody Girls are a unique choir motivates so much the more; we developed our own style and are proud of it. And being a Ukrainian choir in these day gives an extra dimension to what we do.
What the future in this respect will bring is of course unknown but the motivation is to develop the Melody Girls further into a choir with a very strong own identity and potential and to hold concerts in several European countries on a professional level.
The style of the music will be explained in the block: “the Melody Girls Choir and their music” ( see below) but a very important element is the concept of our future concerts.
In the future the Melody Girls will have their concerts preferably as joined concerts with, as we call it: “ well respected friends” which means a joined concert with:
A pop artist or pop group
A large male voice choir
A quintet ( with blazer instruments)
A joined concert challenges us to bring the songs in line with our partners and gives the audience their own well known artists, the Melody Girls with their own songs and especially the jointly performance with songs adapted for the occasion.
It enriches our concerts very much.
Stand alone concerts are also possible in case of special occasions.
The future of The Melody Girls will be concentrated on trips to Europe and as a very important dream: the U.S.A and Canada.
By far the most viewers we have are from the United States and Canada but this is in line with the huge amount of diaspora of Ukrainians that have built their living there and still have a strong sympathy for Ukraine; from 2024 we hope to have the arrangements ready for this trip and please follow our website or become a subscriber on You Tube and follow the development.
The Melody Girls of Ukraine started as a student choir in Kyiv and developed to a professional choir with its own unique style that is built on music of the sixties and around strong melodies and positive emotion.
We thank you for being with us and looking forward to see you on the social media and concerts.
We do all we can to continue on the road we are walking on.
