Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko) and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko are reinterpreting Hildegard of Bingen’s music, employing the sound production principles of authentic Ukrainian folk singing, practised by Andriana-Yaroslava, and modular synthesis techniques based on polyphony and monophony of the High Middle Ages, which Oleh has been researching for the past years.
Hildegard’s work has long since gone beyond the repertoires of mediaeval music ensembles and the interest of medievalists. It is popular among contemporary music composers, experimental music artists, and representatives of dance music and New Age communities. Performances of Hildegard’s music have developed an interpretative tradition that engages the voices of angelic, seemingly disembodied nature.
‘Гільдеґарда’ also presents an opportunity to place traditional Ukrainian culture among European culture, where it rightfully belongs. Oleh and Andriana-Yaroslava prepared the concert version and recorded ‘Гільдеґарда’ in September 2024 as artists in residency at Sylvanes Abbey in France, in an XII-century Cistercian church with unique acoustics. The subsequent premiere at Unsound was met with resounding success, described by Philip Sherburne as “the most astonishingly gorgeous show”.
Facts
Heinali:
1. I think that Cormac McCarthy was right. The world’s heart indeed beat at some terrible cost, and the world’s pain and its beauty does move in a relationship of diverging equity and ‘in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower’.
2. When the statement ‘music connects people’ is made, it is essential to clarify the omitted part—who is precisely being connected with whom and what kind of relationship this connection produces.
3. Art has nothing to do with morality. To quote Paglia, ‘the artist makes art not to save humankind but to save himself. Every benevolent remark by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others’.
Andriana-Yaroslava:
To free the voice is to free the person.
My first childhood idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up was to become a mail carrier. That way, I decided I would travel a lot around the world and deliver letters straight into the recipients’ hands. In the way, that’s what’s happening now.
My voice is my country.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Heinali: For a lack of a better term, an ‘unexpected sublime’. In a musical practice, it is an unforeseen outcome of a stochastic process with a wondrous, overwhelming, sublime quality. It might or might not occur, but you can create certain conditions that increase the chance of it happening.
Andriana-Yaroslava: Simple moments of silence. Silence is always filled with something. And it’s this act of listening into the silence that is the richest source of inspiration for me.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
Heinali: In the early 2000s. I had and still have no formal musical education. Back then, I listened to a lot of adventurous music that circulated on mixtapes and CDRs. Artists like Aphex Twin, Aube, Autechre, Coil, Death in June, Current 93, The Sisters of Mercy, Merzbow, Boyd Rice. Some of this music proved to be emancipatory—it taught me that I do not have to have a grasp of music theory to dare to put sounds together. A friend recommended that I try my luck with electronic music software, a so-called music tracker, and it worked for me as it did not require a knowledge of music theory and allowed for a lot of blind experimentation, and the aforementioned ‘unexpected sublime’ was a frequent occurrence.
Andriana-Yaroslava: As a child, I loved being home alone because it meant I could play the piano—not the things I had to learn for music school, but whatever I felt like playing or singing while inventing melodies.
That’s how I created my first childhood songs, although I never seriously wrote them down—and now I slightly regret that.
Later, I joined a school cover band, where I did some arranging.
More seriously, I got into music production when I started learning to use a DAW in 2022. That gave me the freedom to record my voice instantly—without overthinking, sometimes without even planning the melodies ahead—just improvising. That’s how I came up with my first tracks for theatrical performances.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time? (yes we know it is difficult).
Heinali:
Coil – Love’s Secret Domain
Nine Inch Nails – Downward Spiral
The Sisters of Mercy – Floodland
Abbaye Saint Pierre de Solesmes – Solesmes 1930
Hilliard Ensemble – Perotin
Andriana-Yaroslava:
Okean Elzy – Yananebibuv
Floating Points – Promises
Sashuma Soma – Home
VOICES8 – Enchanted Isle
Melanie De Biasio – No Deal
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Heinali: Each time I travel to Berlin, it never fails to reveal yet another facet of itself. Devising its varied geometry is akin to solving an impossible math problem, as only god knows how many of these facets this city has in storage.
Andriana-Yaroslava: Brazen freedom, pop art, S-Bahn.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Heinali: Peizazhna Alley in Kyiv.
Andriana-Yaroslava: Lion’s Hill (Hora Leva).
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Heinali: It would have been a shame to miss such an opportunity to invent music. Jokes aside, about twenty years ago, I dropped a financially secure computer science career and sacrificed other privileges like having a family in favour of doing something personally meaningful. Doing music nowadays, when someone with two decades of experience behind them, with twenty to thirty concerts per year, award nominations and international recognition, could barely make ends meet, is a curse. It either has to be bigger than you or you have to be utterly mad; there is no other possible reason to pursue this path.
Andriana-Yaroslava: I would dance—but can dance even exist without music?
If not, I would be a writer.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listened to?
Heinali: I think the last record I bought was Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame by Organum Ensemble.
Andriana-Yaroslava: Lately, I’ve been turning again to traditional Ukrainian folk songs, and have been deeply listening to and learning this one: Drevo – Oy shcho u nedilyu.
Drevo is a folk ensemble from the village of Kryachkivka in the Poltava region and is considered a benchmark of Ukrainian polyphonic singing
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Heinali: It entirely depends on the project I am working on and its associated artistic goals, values and visions. As for Гільдеґарда, I do not think I could find anyone better suited than Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko.
Andriana-Yaroslava: There was a time when I couldn’t have even imagined the kind of collaboration I’m part of now—I mean Hildegard with Heinali. It’s such a contrasting combination, and yet I feel completely in the right place for this moment in my life.
As for the future—and considering that I seem to truly open up through collaboration—I remain open to everything.
I’d love to try myself as a soloist in a large band, or join a theatre troupe, or perform with a symphony orchestra, or create a soundtrack for a major film.
I love to dream :)
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Heinali: As a spectator, Graindelavoix performing Josquin des Prez lamentations at Janskerk in Utrecht.
Andriana-Yaroslava: A year ago, while living in Wrocław, I attended a closed performance of Action: Medea at Studio na Grobli, part of the Grotowski Institute.
It was a show, a ritual, and also a deep training practice based on Euripides’ myth of Medea, set to Corsican and Sardinian traditional polyphonies.
Just three young actresses in a small room, sounding so powerful and from the depth of their beings—so filled with meaning and honesty—that I couldn’t breathe or look away from the first to the last minute.
Afterwards, I spent a long time recovering, overwhelmed with tears. It was a true catharsis.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Heinali: It is there to help me achieve my goals.
Andriana-Yaroslava: I was raised in an old-school academic music education where no one had ever heard of DAWs—we wrote music by hand in a staff notebook.
So technology isn’t really the field where I feel strongest. I thrive more in live collaboration and performative presence, here and now.
Technology often (mostly) simplifies the creative process a thousandfold—but sometimes I feel frustrated by the overwhelming number of possibilities.
So I’m still learning to find that balance.
11. What can we expect from your Kiezsalon concert?
Heinali: Expect a rather radical interpretation of Hildegard von Bingen’s music that is as demanding as rewarding.
Andriana-Yaroslava: Expect radical truth.
