Ganna Gryniva

She came to Germany from Ukraine with her parents in 2002 at the age of 13. Today, she is one of the most impressive singers on the German jazz and world music scene. Her most recently released album is HOME (2022) – full of ravishingly beautiful songs in sophisticated arrangements. A jazz highlight of the year, says Roland Spiegel from Bayerischer Rundfunk:

“A mood and a voice that immediately captivate. A gentle forward momentum of sound. A – still – quiet celebration of the moment. A blossoming. It is the voice of singer Ganna Gryniva. Her new album HOME begins with a song about spring. A folk song from the country from which Ganna Gryniva once came to Germany, the Ukraine. You can hardly sing about spring more beautifully than she does here. The shimmering colors in her voice. The flexibility of her singing. And this naturalness. These notes are like the gentle and ever firmer touches of a dance. And yet this is a song full of symbolic power at this time of year. Because spring is the season after a hard winter. The powerful new beginning after difficult months.

The singer is also backed by an excellent band: saxophonist Philip Gropper, Swedish pianist Povel Widestrand, bassist Tom Berkmann from Bavaria and Austrian drummer Mathias Ruppnig. A strong team for very expressive music.

One of the highlights of the album is a song about a mother and her son saying goodbye before he goes off to war. He asks her for forgiveness if he doesn’t come back alive. It is a folk song that became popular in the winter of 2013-2014, when more than a hundred people lost their lives in the violent crackdown on protests against pro-Russian policies. It became a requiem for the victims. In 2022, this Ukrainian song is one of the most frequently sung.”

For Ukrainian-born Ganna Gryniva, old folk songs from her homeland are a matter close to her heart – and a real musical treasure trove. Her critically acclaimed album HOME (with the GANNA Ensemble) has already caused a sensation with its emotionally charged, jazz-tinged arrangements – Bayerischer Rundfunk called HOME “(…) certainly an album of the year, poignant, powerful, magnificently sung and played!”.

The follow-up KUPALA (Berthold records, 2023), on which Gryniva works with loops, samples and other effects, sounds much more electronic. Here, too, the Berliner-by-choice skillfully combines different sensory worlds from jazz to Ukrainian folk to experimental music, always with a strong reference to the original themes of the Ukrainian singing tradition such as love, mourning and the connection between everyday life and nature.

She has repeatedly traveled to her old homeland to rummage through archives for traditional folk songs and record the songs of her grandmothers and grandfathers. She now presents these finds in her solo pieces – in an extremely original way. On the album, produced together with Tomáš Kaspar from London, Gryniva is supported on some pieces by Swiss drummer Julian Sartorius. When listening, it quickly becomes clear that the technology used is not an end in itself, but serves to emphasize the pulse of the music – as in the winter ballad Hanya or the love song Obrutch. Ganna likes songs that radiate optimism and joie de vivre, and on her solo album she has accentuated and elaborated this energy in a completely different way.

Two tracks from KUPALA can also be heard in the award-winning documentary Life after Butscha (Grimme Prize, 2023), which deals with Russian war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Butscha. The film’s director, Mila Teshaieva, was so impressed by Gryniva’s music that she used two pieces for the documentary. Gryniva: Lebidonka is about Cossacks defending their country while their relatives at home pray that they will return home unharmed. And Misto is a love song. Overall, this is an extremely powerful and in some ways challenging film. On the one hand, because it grips the viewer and confronts them with great sadness. On the other hand, because it shows in a touching way how strong the survivors are mentally and how they support each other in rebuilding.

Together with filmmaker Peter Bräunig, Gryniva has also completed her own documentary Spivanka. The film conveys impressions of her trip to Ukraine in 2018: “There are scenes in which I talk to old women who sing for me and tell me their life stories.” The film penetrates deep into the soul of Ukrainian folk music – thanks to its protagonists, who remember the music of their childhood and preserve it in their memories by passing it on orally. It is these images and scenes that underline the independent and autonomous identity of the Ukrainian people. “Spivanka” was shown as part of the WOMEX music expo 2023, which took place in A Coruña/Spain at the end of October. GANNA will play its own showcase at WOMEX 2024.

She has also just released a new single: Mermaids. The track is inspired by a ritual folklore song from the Kyiv region, which is sung during Mermaid Week. During this week, people allowed the mystical creatures of nature to run riot and hoped to be undisturbed by them for the rest of the year.

Two protagonists of the Berlin music scene, Ganna Gryniva and Tal Arditi, create an unexpected world of color. They improvise playfully and with great joy on old Ukrainian folk songs and their own compositions. We can look forward to an “expressive, incredibly versatile duo, equally intense and entertaining” (DLF Kultur).

Tal Arditi is a guitarist, composer, singer and songwriter. At the age of 16, he studied at the renowned Jazz Institute program at Rimon Music University in Tel Aviv, graduated two years later and moved to Berlin shortly afterwards, where he has lived ever since. Tal has already established himself both in the local Berlin music scene and internationally as a celebrated guitarist, composer and musical heavyweight. In the summer of 2022, Tal was invited to play a full show with two members of the legendary band The Rolling Stones.

For the production of the album KUPALA, the singer was supported by the London producer Tomáš Kašpar, the Vienna-based Ukrainian author Tanja Maljartschuk and the drummer, percussionist and artist Julian Sartorius:

The Swiss musician creates completely new, unique soundscapes with sounds from found objects and prepared instruments. His musical approach impressively combines organic nuances with electronic elements. In addition to releasing several solo albums, he also devotes himself to audiovisual art projects and performs both in intimate settings and on festival stages. His training at renowned jazz schools has shaped his independent style, which is reflected in projects such as the Beat Diary-Box and the Morphblog series. The latest album HIDDEN TRACKS: BASEL – GENÈVE was created on a journey during which he recorded sounds and textures from the surrounding area.
Sartorius has collaborated with a variety of well-known musicians such as Kae Tempest, Matthew Herbert, Sophie Hunger and James Zoo. His live performances have taken him to stages in North and South America, Asia and Europe, where he has performed with renowned artists such as Marc Ribot and Arto Lindsay.