Cheryl Redmond has a passion for music and helping others, especially the people of Ukraine.
She and her committee held a benefit concert earlier this month in Beaver County that raised $26,000 for DTCare, the Moon-based nonprofit that has been sending humanitarian aid and launching art therapy and veterans programs since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The concert at Park Presbyterian Church marked the fourth effort she spearheaded, with the series starting at the Sewickley Methodist Church in 2022. This month’s concert was the second held at Park Presbyterian. Now the concerts move back and forth between Beaver and Sewickley, which, as she noted, are just 30 minutes apart. A fifth concert will take place in Sewickley this December.
Redmond has had help, she said, starting with Victoria Luperi, associate principal clarinet and principal E-flat clarinet of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She talked to her at a 2022 Sewickley Music Club benefit when Luperi was working with a Ukrainian pianist. That conversation led to the need to raise money for Ukraine, and the series began.
Luperi became the primary contact for musicians, including Ukrainian violinist Marta Krechkovsky, who joined the PSO at the beginning of the 2014-2015 season. She still has family in Ukraine.
Redmond and her committee members learned about DTCare after the first concert from the Rev. Michael Kochis of St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Ambridge, and his wife, Paula. At first the proceeds benefited Nova Ukraine, a California-based nonprofit organized when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014; after the second concert the Moon nonprofit shared in what was raised. Now DTCare receives all the donations.
“DTCare is right in our backyard,” Redmond said. “I can get there in 10 minutes.”
Father Kochis and the Rev. Todd Allen, pastor of Park Presbyterian, offered a welcome before the program of six classical music pieces began. It closed with the Ukrainian national anthem, “Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina,” which translates to “Ukraine Has Not Perished.”
Attendees could purchase Ukrainian artwork, clothing and jewelry and other items from Ukrainian creatives and the Ukrainian Cultural and Humanitarian Institute, which offers an art therapy program, Warm Hands, for orphaned and disadvantaged Ukrainian children. A silent auction for two framed posters by Vincent Benson, from a painting he made titled “Tower of Sunflowers,” helped add to the total. Twenty prints of the painting sold for $20 each.
Redmond said the generosity moved her, with donations from attendees and other contributors ranging from $1 to $5,000.
In addition to Luperi, Krechkovsky and Allen, the concert committee included Natasha Thompson and Courtney Robson from DTCare and Oleksandr Fraze Frazenko, a Ukrainian filmmaker, writer and musician currently a writer in residence at City of Asylum. His wife, Mari Frazé-Frazenko, sang the Ukrainian anthem.
Ukraine program manager Robson wrote a message for the concert program that explained DTCare’s work there, notably its music and art therapy programs. Its team employs 28 art therapists operating in 10 oblasts or administrative regions, providing hundreds of free sessions monthly to their communities. The donations will be allocated toward continuing and expanding them.
She stressed the connection of the concert to the war. “Art, in the face of unimaginable devastation, is a powerful act of resistance. It is what reminds people of what is worth fighting for,” Robson wrote. “Through this concert, we become a part of that resistance. Ensuring Ukrainian performers are seen and heard, we bear witness to their talent, training and cultural celebration — and we carry that forward with us. It isn’t erased.
“Our team brings art therapy services to [internally displaced person] centers, bomb shelters and to support groups for grieving mothers,” she wrote. “They bring art therapy services to towns in formerly occupied territories, orphanages, and to soldiers in hospitals. They offer art therapy services to veterans navigating the transition from war to civilian life as part of our Hero’s Compass program.”
Redmond’s love of classical music started with piano lessons as a young girl growing up in Flin Flon, Manitoba. She left Canada to study for a master’s degree in piano and music history at Northwestern, where she met her husband, Jim.
He traveled a great deal for business so she taught piano lessons, and after his retirement Cheryl Redmond became very involved with Symphony North, affiliated with Pittsburgh Symphony Association. The couple traveled on two patron tours with the PSO, too.
Neither has Ukrainian heritage, but Redmond knew many Ukrainians growing up and attending school with them. The Redmonds traveled to Ukraine – including Crimea – and their brother-in-law’s family is from Ukraine.
“It pulls at my heartstrings,” she said. “… It is a beautiful country. It resonated with me. I just decided they needed help with the biggest bully in the world just stampeding through the country, taking their culture, taking their children. Trying to obliterate them from the face of this Earth.”
Donations can still be made until the end of the month. Checks can be made out to DTCare with Ukraine benefit in the memo line and sent to Cheryl Redmond, 316 Beaver St., Sewickley, PA 15143.
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Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.