The Claquers is a Ukrainian online magazine devoted to classical music that unites a group of music critics with the mission to foster a critical conversation about art music in Ukraine and beyond. The Claquers organization was founded in June 2020 by musicologist Stas Nevmerzhytskyi and three colleagues: musicologist Dzvenyslava Safian, music theorist Liza Sirenko, and cultural critic Oleksandr Ostrovskyi.

The publication’s provocative name suggests the context in which The Claquers was conceived. After two previous generations of proactive critics who had careers in education and cultural promotion, classical music criticism was limited to either positive reviews or no reviews at all. A fresh and uncensored eye on events in classical music life in Ukraine was needed to shake up the musical community and complete the country’s classical music ecosystem.

Unlike in western Europe and North America, art music audiences in Ukraine are much younger. The collective of writers with The Claquers is also young, and has taken on the task of explaining to these new listeners why a long tradition of classical music in Ukraine exists, and how it became a part of today’s cultural life. As a group The Claquers considers its main goals: to educate about contemporary classical Ukrainian music, to build bridges with popular culture by publishing about diverse musical genres and other arts (such as music in literature or in the film), to expand the critical tools of music criticism with audio podcasts, and to cultivate audiences abroad via an English version of the website.

Listening to contemporary Ukrainian music

Ongoing

Texts about how to listen to the music of contemporary Ukrainian composers. 

theclaquers.com/en/posts/tag/listening-to-contemporary-ukrainian-music 

Pandemic Media Space

13 November 2020 – 2 April 2021

Partners: House of Europe, Ukrainian Association of Electroacoustic Music

A cycle of texts dedicated to the Pandemic Media Space Project—a platform where composers can find different sorts of data (ecological, geolocational, medical) and use it in the process of composing musical pieces.

theclaquers.com/en/posts/tag/pandemic-media-space-en 

Alla Zagaykevych and Thomas Gorbach talk about acousmatic music (interview)

3 November 2020

theclaquers.com/en/posts/5243 

Christian Filips: Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, Bach archive and Ukrainian music (interview)

27 July 2022

theclaquers.com/en/posts/9752 

Musicologist Leah Batstone about the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival and the Notes from Ukraine (interview)

30 November 2022

theclaquers.com/en/posts/10467