BELFAST — The Maine Balkan Choir and the Huddled Masses Orchestra will perform “Songs to Warm a Ukrainian Hearth” Sunday, Oct. 22 at 3 p.m., at the Unitarian Universalist Church, at 37 Miller Street, in Belfast. 

The concert is a benefit fundraiser for the World Central Kitchen’s Ukraine food program, which has been serving millions of meals and supporting communities on the front lines of the war since Russia’s large-scale invasion of the country in February 2022. 

The Balkan Choir will be singing songs that celebrate Ukraine culture, including songs of  joy and sadness, lullabies, love songs and laments. 

The suggested donation is $10 per person, with children free of charge. 

Patrick Hurley, a Belfast resident who has been helping a school in Bucha, Ukraine, said that he wanted to bring the Maine Balkan Choir to Belfast after hearing the group’s first concert in Ukrainian this spring in Portland. 

“It was almost hard to hold back some tears,” he said, in a news release.

He and his wife, middle school teacher Martha Conway-Cole, are close friends with a teacher from Bucha, Anna Maymeskul, who evacuated to England after the invasion. She told them she was worried that people were going to get tired of the war news and forget about the Ukrainians. Organizing the Belfast concert is one way to remind people of what is happening half a world away.  

“Anna’s already seen the poster for the concert. It really warms her heart that we’re not forgetting,” Hurley said. 

The musicians began practicing Ukrainian music together after last winter, with groups rehearsing in Belfast, Ellsworth, and Portland under the direction of Anne Tatgenhorst and Sarah Hipkens. The singers learned how to pronounce Ukrainian words and practiced the stirring, melodic folk songs that tell stories of welcome, family, love, war, loss, and more. 

“What the Balkan Choir has always done has been to present the music as authentically as it can be presented,” said organizer Joe Niemczura of Thorndike, who co-founded the Maine Balkan Choir 25 years ago.

The singers will be accompanied by members of the Huddled Masses Orchestra, which Niemczura founded in 1994. Instruments include the trumpet, accordion, baritone horn, violin and cello.