Taking 5 with Catherine Likhuta

I was born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine in a family of musicians and was surrounded by music from birth. I studied classical and jazz piano from the age of five, through my childhood and for my undergraduate degrees. When I turned 12, my mum, then a children’s piano teacher, asked me constantly to either compose or arrange short pieces for her younger students to keep them engaged. This was my first introduction to composing. During my MMus studies in piano performance, I composed several jazzy tunes for my college jazz ensemble and performed them with my friends. They loved my pieces; by no means were those the best pieces in the world, but to my friends they were because of the personal connection to the composer behind that music. I remember that the overwhelming encouragement and support from my peers was an amazing feeling which I wanted to keep experiencing for the rest of my life. That is how I decided to become a professional composer and started studying composition from that moment onwards.

A healthy mix of my influences in life and music: a crossover between contemporary concert music with reliance on traditional forms (rondo, sonata, etc.), with jazz-inspired rhythms and harmonic structures, and with a hint of Ukrainian folk music spotted throughout. My writing is often programmatic; I enjoy telling musical stories and portraying a wide spectrum of emotions. And it has to be fun for others to play, which draws from my own decades-long experience as a performer. Many of my pieces are virtuosic, as I enjoy giving my performers an opportunity to grow while playing my works.

1. Dana Wilson and Steven Stucky, the two composers from Ithaca, NY, who coached me on my composing free of charge for over three years right after I came to the US in 2005. They both were wildly successful composers, and yet they managed to find the time in their busy schedules to help this new girl in town who didn’t even know much English (we communicated through music at first, which was very special). I learned from them how to remain humble and giving while being a composer, no matter the level of success.
2. Composers whose music I performed as pianist and thought I was the luckiest musician in the world to be playing such cool pieces. 
3. My great-grandmother, who introduced me to Ukrainian folk music and culture.
4. Pieces like Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, in which I discover something new for myself every time I listen to it, no matter how many times I’ve already heard it. But also pieces that speak to me immediately, on an emotional level. 

It’s a combination of both. I have been using a compositional tool I invented for myself, which I coined as “premeditated improvisation” in my PhD thesis. This process helps me connect with my musical thoughts on a deeper and more organic level. It most often requires a piano, even when I’m writing for any other instrument, although sometimes I use my voice or even just dictate into a voice recorder some verbal ideas for musical material. I record most of my musical ideas and then work on them methodically until I hear what I like. I almost always come up with the title of the piece I’m about to compose first. As a composer of programmatic music, that title serves as an inspiration for characters, mood, tempi and a whole range of parameters.