Epidaurus Festival in Cavtat 2023, Croatia, will take place on Sunday, August 27th

‘Music is one of the most powerful unifiers. It’s an incredible force that enchants, brings together even those who differ in everything. The Dubrovnik Association of Visual Artists and the Epidaurus Cavtat Festival are joining for the third time through artistic expression inspired by music. Just as Music and Visual Art have been intertwined since time immemorial, so are DuLu and the Epidaurus festival interwoven, united, and friendly.
They are symbiotic. Just as the symbiosis between artistic forms reflects the influence of one medium on the other, the exhibition and concert intertwine with them, holding hands, whispering to each other a multitude of secrets, hidden desires, and compliments. In their realm, both artistic forms seamlessly transform into each other. Just as music is an inspiration for many painters and visual artists, so are painterly, visual impressions a great inspiration for musicians. They influence and inspire each other, creating an inseparable, harmonious connection with indescribable emotional depth and infinite expressive power. Once again, we are convinced that our bond of unity and the wonderful dialogue between visual and musical art is just one soul. One uses colors, light, darkness, shapes, pencils, or brushes, the other uses instruments, key and tonal changes, sounds, lyrics, and much more to achieve the same. This love story of the two arts is a true romance, a theme with variations, or a musical rondo, where each repetition is more beautiful than the previous one, and each already experienced theme is a kind of emotion immortalized and woven onto the stage of our hearts, beings, and thoughts.
In that moment, time stands still for a moment, allowing us to love, respect, forgive, and calm all those lows that persistently offend our world,’ the artistic director of the Epidaurus festival, Ivana Marija Vidović, wrote in the exhibition’s depliant.
After the opening of the exhibition The Power of Music, a piano concert by the Ukrainian virtuoso Danylo Sayenko will be held, also his premiere performance in Croatia. Sayenko and Ivana Marija Vidović began their collaboration when our pianist noticed him at a competition in Italy as a jury member. Sayenko triumphed with absolute awards, and the desire of the artistic director of the Epidaurus festival for this virtuoso to perform at the 17th edition intensified when his homeland became a scene of war horrors.
Until recently, his coming and performing seemed almost impossible, but this gifted, virtuoso, and already fully formed thirty-two-year-old musician from Lviv will hold a recital that will open the 17th concert season of the beloved Cavtat international Epidaurus festival in a very dignified manner,’ emphasized Ivana Marija Vidović.
Danylo Sayenko was born in 1991 in Lviv, one of the Ukrainian cities most affected by Russian aggression. His first piano teacher in Lviv was Yuriy Moysyak at the music lyceum named after Solomiya Krushelnytska. Danylo further studied at the Mykola Lysenko Academy of Music in Lviv from 2009 to 2014, under the guidance of Professor Jozef Ermin. Since 2014, he has been studying at the Hochschule fuer Musik und Theater in Hamburg with Professor Anna Vinnitskaya and from 2017 at the Hochschule fuer Musik und Theater in Rostock with Professor Mattias Kirschnereit.

Among numerous awards received, the following stand out: International Piano Competition “Maria Canals” (Barcelona/Spain 2015) – 1st Prize, I. J. Paderewski International Piano Competition (Bydgoszcz/Poland 2022) – 3rd Prize, International Concours Piano of Ile de France (Maisons Laffite, France, 2022) – 1st Prize, Euregio Piano Award International Piano Competition 2023, Geilenkirchen (Germany) – 2nd Prize, International Piano Competition “Grad Vigo” in Spain 2023 – 2nd Prize, Richard Vines Piano Competition 2021 (Lleida, Spain) – 2nd Prize, Campillos Piano Competition 2022 (Campillos, Spain) – 3rd Prize, Rospigliosi IPC “Premio Schumann” 2023, Lamporecchio, Italy – 2nd Prize, International Piano Competition Colafemmina – Acquaviva delle Fonti, 2021, Italy) – 1st Prize, International Piano “Arcangelo Speranza” Competition 2021 in Taranto, Italy – 1st Prize, International Piano Competition J. Krogulski (Tarnów, Poland 2022) – 1st Prize, IPC “GIORGOS Thymis” (Thessaloniki, Greece 2015) – 1st Prize, International Piano Competition Massarosa (Massarosa/Italy 2018) – 1st Prize, International Competition of Polish Music, Rzeszlaw, Poland 2023 – 5th Place, International Piano Competition in Tbilisi 2022, (Tbilisi, Georgia) – 4th Prize, “Galina Cherni-Stefanska in Memoriam” IPC, Poznan, Poland 2022 – finalist, IPC “Luciano Luciani” (Cosenza, Italy 2020) -  2nd Prize, International Piano “Kharkiv Assemblies” Competition (Kharkiv, Ukraine 2018) – 1st Prize, “Nova Coppia Pianisti” international piano competition 2022 (Osimo, Italy) – 3rd Prize, and many others.
Danylo actively performs solo concerts and with orchestras in Ukraine and European countries such as Germany, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, Romania, France, Slovakia, and Norway.
‘In his musical embrace, let’s together wish peace and love to the world, and in the opening of the exhibition by our Dubrovnik artists, let’s find many memories and motives from the timeline of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, let’s celebrate the anniversaries of famous world musicians, let’s color ourselves with the most beautiful colors of the creations of our talented visual artists who are presenting themselves for the third time with their imaginative achievements – Celebrating the unparalleled power of music’, further emphasized the artistic director Vidović, welcoming all art lovers to Cavtat.
The Epidaurus Cavtat Festival sincerely thanks all sponsors, donors, performers, and the audience, noting that alternative locations in case of bad weather are the Culture House in Cavtat and Čilipi.
Information about the Epidaurus Cavtat Festival can also be found on www.epidaurusfestival.com and on the Festival’s social media.