Kiev

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is an outstanding architectural monument of Kievan Rus'. Today, it is one of the city's best known landmarks and the... first Ukrainian patrimony to be inscribed on the World Heritage List along with the Kiev Cave Monastery complex. Aside from its main building, the cathedral includes an ensemble of supporting structures such as a bell tower, the House of Metropolitan, and others. In 2011 the historic site was reassigned from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. One of the reasons for that move was the fact that both "Sofia Kyivska" and Kiev Pechersk Lavra are recognized by the UNESCO World Heritage Program as one complex, while in Ukraine the two were governed by different government entities. In Ukrainian the cathedral is known as Sobor Sviatoyi Sofiyi or Sofiyskyi sobor . In Russian it is known as Sobor Svyatoi Sofii or Sofiyskiy sobor .
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The Saint Andrew's Church is a major Baroque church located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The church was constructed in 1747–1754, to a... design by the Imperial Russian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli. It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a cathedral. The Saint Andrew's Church overlooks the historic Podil neighborhood, situated on a steep hill to which the church gave its current name Andriyivska Hill. It is currently one of four architectural landmarks of Ukraine, which were put down on the List of Mankind Treasures of Five Continents by the world society. As the church sits atop a hill, foundation problems have been one of the main concerns of preservationists. More recently, the foundation below the church has started to shift, causing some concerns that the church's foundation might collapse. Cracks have already appeared in the foundation, and some of the church's falling decor has been found in neighboring areas. St Andrew's Church was built in honor of Saint Andrew who is recognized as the "Apostle of "Rus".
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St Volodymyr's Cathedral is a cathedral in the centre of Kiev. It is one of the city's major landmarks and the mother cathedral of the Ukrainian... Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy, one of two major Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. In 1852, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow suggested a large cathedral should be built in Kiev to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus' by prince Vladimir the Great of Kiev . People from all over the Russian Empire started donating to this cause, so that by 1859 the cathedral fund had amassed a huge sum of 100,000 rubles. The Kiev Pechersk Lavra produced one million bricks and presented them to the cathedral as well. The design was executed in neo-Byzantine style initially by the architects I. Schtrom, P. Sparro, R. Bemhardt, K. Mayevsky, V. Nikolayev. The final version of the design belongs to Alexander Vikentievich Beretti.
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The Golden Gates of Kiev is a major landmark of the Ancient Kiev and historic gateway in the ancient city fortress, located in the capital of... Ukraine. Currently it serves as a museum and can be found on the corner of Volodymyr street and Yaroslaviv Val Street . The name Zoloti Vorota is also used for a nearby theatre and a station of the Kiev Metro. The modern history states that this gateway was one of three constructed by Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev, in 1037 about when the Saint Sophia Cathedral was erected. However some sources claim that the gates stood some time before that like for example the painting of Jan Matejko where he depicts both Bolelaw Chrobry and Sviatopolk I entering the city during the Kiev succession crisis in 1018. This version currently is being considered as a legend. Originally named as simply the Southern gates they were one of the three main gates of the city fortification with other being called: Lyadski and Zhydivski . The last two gates did not manage to survive.
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Milla Jovovich is an American model, actress, musician, and fashion designer. Over her career, she has appeared in a number of science fiction and... action-themed films, for which music channel VH1 has referred to her as the "reigning queen of kick-butt". Milla Jovovich began modeling when Gene Lemuel convinced Herb Ritts to shoot her for the cover of Lei magazine. Richard Avedon featured her in Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertisements, and she continued her career with other campaigns for L'Oréal cosmetics, Banana Republic, Christian Dior, Donna Karan, and Versace. In 1988, she had her first professional acting role in the television film The Night Train to Kathmandu, and later that year, she appeared in her first feature film, Two Moon Junction. Following more small television appearances such as the "Fair Exchange" and a 1989 role as a French girl on a Married with Children episode and film roles, she gained notoriety with the romance film Return to the Blue Lagoon .
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Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky , was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a... choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer. Deren was born in Kiev, present-day Ukraine, to psychologist Solomon Derenkowsky and Marie Fiedler, who supposedly named her after Italian actress Eleanora Duse. In 1922, the family moved to Syracuse, New York. Her father shortened the family name to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York. He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse. In 1928, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Her mother moved to Paris to be with her daughter while she attended the League of Nations School in Geneva, Switzerland from 1930 to 1933. Deren began college at Syracuse University, where she became active in the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League . Through the YPSL she met Gregory Bardacke, whom she later married at the age of eighteen. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City.
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Jascha Horenstein was an American conductor. Horenstein was born in Kiev, Russian Empire , into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother came from an... Austrian rabbinical family and his father was Russian. His family moved to Koenigsberg in 1906 and then to Vienna in 1911 and he studied at the Vienna Academy of Music starting in 1916, with Joseph Marx and Franz Schreker . In 1920, he moved to Berlin and worked as an assistant to Wilhelm Furtwängler. During the 1920s he conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He became principal conductor of the Düsseldorf Opera in 1928, and then the company's Generalmusikdirektor in 1929. He had to resign his post in March 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party. His Düsseldorf tenure was the only permanent musical directorship in his career. Forced as a Jew to flee the Nazis, he moved to the United States of America in 1940, and eventually became an American citizen. He taught at the New School for Social Research while in New York City.
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Misha Mengelberg is a Dutch jazz pianist and composer. He won the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1961. Mengelberg was born in Kiev in... Ukraine, the son of the conductor Karel Mengelberg, who was himself the nephew of the conductor Willem Mengelberg. He briefly studied architecture before entering the Royal Conservatory in The Hague where he studied music from 1958 to 1964. While there he won the first prize at a jazz festival in Loosdrecht and became associated with Fluxus. His early influences included Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and John Cage, whom he heard lecture at Darmstadt. His first appearance on record was on Eric Dolphy's last album, Last Date . Also on that record was the drummer Han Bennink, and the two of them, together with Piet Noordijk formed a quartet which had a number of different bassists, and which played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966. In 1967 he co-founded the Instant Composers Pool, an organisation which promoted avant garde Dutch jazz performances and recordings, with Bennink and Willem Breuker. He was co-founder of STEIM in Amsterdam in 1969. Mengelberg has played with a large variety of musicians.
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Reinhold Moritzevich Glière was a Russian and Soviet composer of German–Polish descent. Glière was born in Kiev, Ukraine . He was... the second son of the wind instrument maker Ernst Moritz Glier from Saxony, who emigrated to the Russian Empire and married Józefa Korczak , the daughter of his master, from Warsaw, Poland. His original name, as given in his baptism certificate, was Reinhold Ernst Glier. About 1900 he changed the spelling and pronunciation of his surname to Glière, which gave rise to the legend, stated by Leonid Sabaneyev for the first time , of his French or Belgian descent. He entered the Kiev school of music in 1891, where he was taught violin by Otakar Ševčík, among others. In 1894 Glière entered the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with Sergei Taneyev , Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov , Jan Hřímalý , Anton Arensky and Georgi Konjus .
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Anatole Litvak was a Ukrainian-born filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in a various countries and languages. He was best known as... the Academy Award nominated director of the 1948 film The Snake Pit. Born Mikhail Anatol Litvak in Kiev, Ukraine, Litvak grew up in a Jewish family and lived in what was then known as the Russian Empire. As a teenager, he worked at a theater in St. Petersburg and took acting lessons at the state drama school. Litvak worked with Leningrad's Nordkino Studios where he was assistant director for nine silent films. For political and ideological reasons, he fled Russia for Berlin, Germany in 1925. In Germany, Litvak made his first few films at the beginning of the 1930s before the rise of the Nazis. He later fled to France prior to the Nazi invasions of World War II. According to film historian Ronald Bowers, Litvak became skilled in using location shooting and realistic documentary effects as early as the 1930s. He also became known in the industry for emphasizing sound effects over dialogue in sound films as well as using camera tracking shots and pans.
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Milla Jovovich is an American model, actress, musician, and fashion designer. Over her career, she has appeared in a number of science fiction and... action-themed films, for which music channel VH1 has referred to her as the "reigning queen of kick-butt". Milla Jovovich began modeling when Gene Lemuel convinced Herb Ritts to shoot her for the cover of Lei magazine. Richard Avedon featured her in Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertisements, and she continued her career with other campaigns for L'Oréal cosmetics, Banana Republic, Christian Dior, Donna Karan, and Versace. In 1988, she had her first professional acting role in the television film The Night Train to Kathmandu, and later that year, she appeared in her first feature film, Two Moon Junction. Following more small television appearances such as the "Fair Exchange" and a 1989 role as a French girl on a Married with Children episode and film roles, she gained notoriety with the romance film Return to the Blue Lagoon .
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Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky , was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a... choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer. Deren was born in Kiev, present-day Ukraine, to psychologist Solomon Derenkowsky and Marie Fiedler, who supposedly named her after Italian actress Eleanora Duse. In 1922, the family moved to Syracuse, New York. Her father shortened the family name to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York. He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse. In 1928, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Her mother moved to Paris to be with her daughter while she attended the League of Nations School in Geneva, Switzerland from 1930 to 1933. Deren began college at Syracuse University, where she became active in the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League . Through the YPSL she met Gregory Bardacke, whom she later married at the age of eighteen. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City.
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Jascha Horenstein was an American conductor. Horenstein was born in Kiev, Russian Empire , into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother came from an... Austrian rabbinical family and his father was Russian. His family moved to Koenigsberg in 1906 and then to Vienna in 1911 and he studied at the Vienna Academy of Music starting in 1916, with Joseph Marx and Franz Schreker . In 1920, he moved to Berlin and worked as an assistant to Wilhelm Furtwängler. During the 1920s he conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He became principal conductor of the Düsseldorf Opera in 1928, and then the company's Generalmusikdirektor in 1929. He had to resign his post in March 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party. His Düsseldorf tenure was the only permanent musical directorship in his career. Forced as a Jew to flee the Nazis, he moved to the United States of America in 1940, and eventually became an American citizen. He taught at the New School for Social Research while in New York City.
more

Misha Mengelberg is a Dutch jazz pianist and composer. He won the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1961. Mengelberg was born in Kiev in... Ukraine, the son of the conductor Karel Mengelberg, who was himself the nephew of the conductor Willem Mengelberg. He briefly studied architecture before entering the Royal Conservatory in The Hague where he studied music from 1958 to 1964. While there he won the first prize at a jazz festival in Loosdrecht and became associated with Fluxus. His early influences included Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and John Cage, whom he heard lecture at Darmstadt. His first appearance on record was on Eric Dolphy's last album, Last Date . Also on that record was the drummer Han Bennink, and the two of them, together with Piet Noordijk formed a quartet which had a number of different bassists, and which played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966. In 1967 he co-founded the Instant Composers Pool, an organisation which promoted avant garde Dutch jazz performances and recordings, with Bennink and Willem Breuker. He was co-founder of STEIM in Amsterdam in 1969. Mengelberg has played with a large variety of musicians.
more

Reinhold Moritzevich Glière was a Russian and Soviet composer of German–Polish descent. Glière was born in Kiev, Ukraine . He was... the second son of the wind instrument maker Ernst Moritz Glier from Saxony, who emigrated to the Russian Empire and married Józefa Korczak , the daughter of his master, from Warsaw, Poland. His original name, as given in his baptism certificate, was Reinhold Ernst Glier. About 1900 he changed the spelling and pronunciation of his surname to Glière, which gave rise to the legend, stated by Leonid Sabaneyev for the first time , of his French or Belgian descent. He entered the Kiev school of music in 1891, where he was taught violin by Otakar Ševčík, among others. In 1894 Glière entered the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with Sergei Taneyev , Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov , Jan Hřímalý , Anton Arensky and Georgi Konjus .
more

Anatole Litvak was a Ukrainian-born filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in a various countries and languages. He was best known as... the Academy Award nominated director of the 1948 film The Snake Pit. Born Mikhail Anatol Litvak in Kiev, Ukraine, Litvak grew up in a Jewish family and lived in what was then known as the Russian Empire. As a teenager, he worked at a theater in St. Petersburg and took acting lessons at the state drama school. Litvak worked with Leningrad's Nordkino Studios where he was assistant director for nine silent films. For political and ideological reasons, he fled Russia for Berlin, Germany in 1925. In Germany, Litvak made his first few films at the beginning of the 1930s before the rise of the Nazis. He later fled to France prior to the Nazi invasions of World War II. According to film historian Ronald Bowers, Litvak became skilled in using location shooting and realistic documentary effects as early as the 1930s. He also became known in the industry for emphasizing sound effects over dialogue in sound films as well as using camera tracking shots and pans.
more