Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra begins its 2026 Invincible Tour

“White hot intensity as Verdi Requiem shakes St. Paul’s vast dome…Wilson leaned in towards the musicians, her focus on them seemingly total, their sound overwhelming.”

The Guardian

On 16 August the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra began its fifth tour under founder and conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson with a packed concert at its home from home in the Teatr-Wielki Opera Narodowa in Warsaw. The world premiere of Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak’s Gloria, in honor of soldiers who have died fighting at the front, was followed by soprano Julia Kleiter’s achingly acute account of Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder and finally a rousingly triumphant Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Two days later, St Paul’s Cathedral in London witnessed a monumental Verdi’s Requiem with a stellar quartet of soloists - Natalya Romaniw, Natalie Lewis, René Barbera and Jongmin Park - the Guardian describing orchestral climaxes that “would surely have registered on a seismometer as they gathered into a thrillingly elemental roar before dissipating as a series of echoed convulsions into the vast dome above.” Two more sell-out concerts with two more standing ovations have followed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. The orchestra now moves to Dublin and then two concerts at Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, New York City, where they will be joined by Lise Davidsen - the most celebrated soprano of her generation - in Strauss’s Four Last Songs as well as performances of Frolyak’s Gloria, Beethoven’s Seventh and Maxim Kolomiiets’s “Suite from The Mothers of Kherson”, ahead of its full operatic premiere in October.