We are “Healing Strings”, a professional duo from Ukraine. We both have our master degrees in music and here in Calgary we are happy to continue our professional music experience. We met here in Calgary a year ago and started playing around the city, bringing some fresh ideas and sharing Ukrainian culture!

For this concert we’re planning to play some classical masterpieces by Antonio Vivaldi, introduce you to Ukrainian classical music by Myroslav Skoryk, and share our original songs by Anastasia, so you can hear our true story and feel what’s in our heart! We are sincerely excited to share our music and culture with you!

Alex Karatsyuba started playing the guitar at the age of ten, and fifteen years later – after studying music at the National Music Academy of Ukraine and taking lessons and master classes from international performing and recording artists – he began teaching and performing around the world. Alex has enjoyed creating music for over 25 years now and the fruit of his endeavors continue to ripen as a result of the amazing feedback and compliments he has received from artists, audiences and students from across the globe. That feedback, along with getting to make music my career, has given Alex a life that is gratifying and fulfilled. Now Alex is teaching and sharing his  passion with the students at Music & Play.

Violinist Anastasiia Lykhosherstova was born and raised in the distant and beautiful land of Ukraine in a family of engineers who simply adored music and home music making. It all started with a church choir, she felt the divine superpower of music, its ability to build invisible bridges between the souls of people and between people and the Almighty. She studied violin and piano at the College of Music in Kharkiv, and received a master’s degree from The Conservatory at the Kharkiv University of Arts. Anastasiia has successfully worked as a concertmaster in University of Arts Symphony Orchestra in Kharkiv,  as a first violin player she worked in Youth Academic Symphony Orchestra “Slobozhansky” and Chamber Orchestra “Nova Sinfonietta” in Ukraine. Anastasiia actively performed modern classical music as a soloist for Festival of Modern Art  “Two days and two nights of New music” in Odesa. Flamenco and Ukrainian folk music also had their own special place in her repertoire. Anastasiia started a new life on the other side of the world in beautiful Calgary in 2022 and now she is a concertmaster for Rocky Mountain Symphony Orchestra in Calgary. As a teenager, she began to play in a  family Christian rock band, then assembled her own line-up, wrote and sang her own songs, and released three EP albums. Since 2019, she has been working for a videogame company as a composer and arranger. She is a loving mother and wife. 

This concert is the second in a series of five Emerging Artists Concerts during 2024 generously sponsored by: