Miroslav graduates high school next month, and he just found out he’s been accepted into the prestigious Peabody Conservatory. Andre Mathieu, a 6-year-old piano prodigy, has another destiny waiting for him. I would like to share my best wishes for this war to end soon. The war has really put a strain on me as well as my family and Ukrainian people all over the world. So this would be the goal for the future. Mykhailenko: I want my audience to be really captivated and captured by what I play, and to be honest one of my goals is to make my audience cry when I play a very emotional piece. Music is a great way to help you work your way through really tough and difficult times.
I think the nice thing is there’s a great community of Ukrainians here in the Chicago area and he’s gotten the support of that. Mykhailenko: That performance with the orchestra playing my national anthem, it really stirred me up to do even more for my Ukrainian community, and it really healed me from anxiety and worry that I had before. To lift his spirits, the student orchestra performed Ukraine’s national anthem with Miroslav on piano. At just eight years old, Marc Yu has already left an indelible mark in the world of classical music as its newest young prodigy. Vitali: At the Music Institute, he’s found support among his peers. The war has created a great deal of anxiety for me, knowing that first, my extended family is still in Ukraine and second, that both of my uncles are actually serving right now in the Ukrainian military and defending my country, so we’re praying for them.
All my memories from Ukraine are very dear to me, I think they really shaped me as a person as an individual and as a performer. Mykhailenko: I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and I moved to the US just four years ago with my family. One of the things that really draws people to great performers is the story behind the individual. Scott Verschoor, Music Institute of Chicago: Miroslav is a remarkable and unique pianist as part of our Academy program. Vitali: 17-year-old Miroslav Mykhailenko is in the Academy program of the Music Institute of Chicago – an elite group of just 35 musicians among the nearly 2,000 students. Marc Yu (born January 5, 1999, Pasadena, California, USA) is a musical child prodigy, playing the piano and (formerly) the cello. Miroslav Mykhailenko, Pianist: I feel very impacted by Prokofiev’s first movement sonata because it was written during the Second World War, and it’s really very dramatic and powerful and I can imagine, you know tanks rolling in, rockets, bombs, Marc Vitali: At Evanston’s Nichols Concert Hall – a former church – a high school senior plays one of Prokofiev’s war sonatas.