Where Girls and Nightingales Sing

Where Girls and Nightingales Sing is a setting of Taras Shevchenko’s poem “Beside the Cottage” - a beautiful reminiscence of country life in Ukraine, written from a prison cell in 1847 where he was held for writing poetry in the Ukrainian language, ridiculing the Russian Imperialist Court, and promoting Ukrainian independence. The “cottage” in the poem is likely his parents’ hut in the village of Shevchenkove (Zvenyhorodka Raion). The presence of the nightingale is central to this text, and also to Ukrainian culture where the bird is deemed “a creator of sweet sounds, a builder of homes, and a harbinger of spring” (https://www.birdlife.org/news/2022/02/26/nightingaleskobzar-taras-and-our-ukrainian-family/). Soloveiko, the Ukrainian word for nightingale, is also a term of personal endearment.