St. Constantine music director returns to Minneapolis after three weeks in Ukraine hometown

Yuri Ivan, music director at St. Constantine Ukrainian Catholic Church in Minneapolis, recently returned to the Twin Cities from a three-week journey to his battle-worn home country of Ukraine. He left March 18 on a flight to Budapest, Hungary, then traveled to the border by car and walked into Ukraine.

Ivan stayed with his ailing mother, who is legally blind, and his sister in their third-story apartment in a town in western Ukraine that had not been hit by Russian bombing or combat troops that have assailed the country since Feb. 24. The Catholic Spirit is not naming the town out of security concerns.

“Once I heard my mom was in a hospital, I had to get on a plane ASAP, and the war didn’t matter at the time,” Ivan said.

Presently, no combat is taking place near his family’s residence, but “the notion of war” is ever present, he said. For one, “the air raid sirens wear you out,” he said. “It’s psychologically hard.”

Faith helps his family, Ivan said. And faith is very much part of everyday life for many in Ukraine, he said.

“People kept their faith during World War II, and during the Soviet times when our Church was outlawed,” Ivan said.?“Many ended up in gulags for their faith,” he said, including some in his family.

“Of course, with the start of the war, we put even more emphasis on praying for peace, for prisoners and for those in need,” he said. “With that said, I don’t think faith ‘kicked into a higher gear’?with the start of the war.?It was always (an) important part of (our) being.”

Faith is especially important to Ukrainian refugees, he said. “There is nothing else left but faith because they lost everything.”

Ivan said his grandfather was a priest in the underground Church, when attending liturgies was banned. “During Soviet times, we worshiped at my grandparents’ place with windows and doors closed, and blinds down so that the neighbors couldn’t see or hear,” he said. “We attend church services regularly.”

With her limited mobility, his mother can’t attend in person, but she livestreams Mass from local churches daily. Her radio is preset to a local Catholic station, Ivan said.

Ivan attended Mass at a local Byzantine Catholic Church. It is a small but vibrant parish, he said, and “a living example” of how faith helps parishioners live during times of war and assist others. “They run the only branch of the L’Arch Community in town,” he said, “an organization that?creates a community for people with mental challenges to interact and work alongside people without disability as equals.” His sister, who has Down syndrome, participates.

Ivan heard up to five sirens every 24 hours in Ukraine. Once a second siren follows the first, “you have to listen carefully,” he said, because the second siren can mean a missile is coming and residents have about five minutes to get into a basement. Sirens go off in a wide territory until officials zero in on the locality where the missile is approaching, he said.

“Then they turn on the three-minute or five-minute warning siren,” Ivan said. “But usually what we hear is the cancellation,” he said, with a message (by text or through loudspeakers) that “you can return to normal life.”

The first siren usually comes with a message saying “run for shelter,” he said. And when the sirens begin, churches ring their bells, too, until the cancellation, he said. Church bells ring because not all areas have loudspeakers, Ivan said. And if the bells ring long enough, “that’s the warning signal,” he said.

Ivan entered Ukraine on foot after traveling to the border by car. He was the only person walking toward Ukraine while seeing “swarms of refugees” leaving, he said. He was motivated by reports of his mother’s failing health and the need to arrange a caretaker for her.

The good news is that his mother is doing a lot better, he said. Today, she uses a walker instead of a cane, “but she can walk herself and she takes care of herself,” he said. Ivan was able to arrange for a caretaker and organize her daily routine in a way that she gets the help she needs.

Ivan has “a big extended family” in that part of Ukraine. “So, there is help and a family community,” he said. Family members bring her “whatever she needs,” he said. Despite the war, family gatherings are taking place, including those at Easter. Churches are open and full, he said, including many in the congregation wearing military attire.

Ivan’s hometown looks the same but traffic is “overflowing” and long lines for food are common. He saw no food shortages. Ivan attributed the congestion to the quadrupling of his hometown’s population due to refugees moving through, including “tons of people” who have lost everything, he said.

He recalled one Saturday when crowds were so large, he felt like he was at “a football match trying to exit the stadium.”

Residents are trying to lead normal lives, he said, but many are hosting refugees. “My cousin probably had 30 people since the start of the war, from different groups.” Some people open their homes to refugees, some churches open their rectories and some refugees want to find a more stable living situation, but rent has quadrupled in his hometown, Ivan said, making it difficult to find a place.

Ivan visited a local Byzantine Catholic Church that housed 25 refugees in its small “parish house.”

Ivan said he is not the type of person who cries easily. But when he crossed the border on foot and saw refugees fleeing and in makeshift camps, and heard their stories, he was moved. One woman he talked with had traveled hundreds of miles toward the border and began using a wheelchair “because she couldn’t walk anymore,” he said. “They put her in a wheelchair and she was crying about one of her children left in the hospital 30 miles behind because the child got sick and couldn’t go (with the family) and was stuck in the hospital. So that’s tragic,” he said.

Ivan hopes that Ukrainians have the resolve to not give up, to carry on with their everyday lives and eventually prevail. “We all hope” the war will end sooner rather than later, he said. “Because the more it drags out, the more suffering it brings.”

Ivan, who completed his doctoral studies in conducting at the University of Minnesota, serves as music director of the Linden Hills Chamber Orchestra in the Twin Cities, and since 2007, as artistic director of the Kenwood Symphony in Minneapolis and as a conductor for the Metropolitan Ballet. Before emigrating to the U.S. in 2001, he was a resident conductor for the State Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, from 1996-2000.

Russian rockets recently hit Lviv, a cultural center in western Ukraine, where Ivan studied for seven years. He has friends who live north of Kyiv and some were in one nearby, occupied village for days. A friend’s wife watched what was happening from a basement, peeking outside “and seeing really horrifying (things),” Ivan said. She was never discovered. She left when the Ukrainian Army came back to the village, he said.

Some of his friends, classmates and fellow musicians are fighting on the front lines. “They are fighting for Ukraine wearing body armor and camouflage instead of tuxedos,” he said.

Might Ivan return to Ukraine? He has no immediate plans.

But he has returned to his work with the choir at St. Constantine. And with the Linden Hills Orchestra and the Kenwood Symphony. Both have upcoming performances: the orchestra April 28 at St. Albert the Great in Minneapolis?and the symphony May 21.