Lidiya Yankovskaya joins list of classical musicians leaving U.S.

Among the ranks of classical musicians leaving the United States, there will soon be another name: Lidiya Yankovskaya, the former Chicago Opera Theater music director who is a familiar presence on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra podium.

Around the time Yankovskaya conducts the CSO and violinist Ray Chen at Ravinia on Saturday — her debut at the prestigious summer festival — her things will be halfway across the Atlantic, en route to London, where Yankovskaya is moving with her family.

Yankovskaya, 39, who has made Chicago her home base since 2017, is among a growing list of classical musicians moving overseas, where she says cultural institutions are supported by a robust public funding apparatus — a starker contrast than ever to the U.S., where the Trump administration is moving to curtail federal investments in the arts.

“I want to be sure that my children can grow up feeling like they can always express themselves freely. I want my children to live in a society that really takes care of its people. I want my children to live in a world that really values things like the arts, that really values things like education,” she told WBEZ on a recent Zoom call from Sydney, where she has been leading Georges Bizet’s classic "Carmen" at the Sydney Opera House. “In London in particular, there is such a culture of valuing intellectualism, of valuing the arts and artistic pursuits for their own sake.”

Yankovskaya’s departure comes at a moment when Trump 2.0 policies are rippling through the arts, from cancellations of federal grants through the National Endowment for the Arts to Trump’s sudden dismissal of board members at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Chicago Opera Theater, her former company, was among the Chicago groups recently impacted by the Trump administration’s move to rescind NEA grants. The news came amid the premiere of "She Who Dared," a new opera about the Montgomery bus boycotts. (Fortunately for the company, it had already received the funds, and, as general director Lawrence Edelson declared to cheers during its June premiere, the government was “not getting it back.”)

Some artists are protesting the U.S. government directly. German violinist Christian Tetzlaff canceled his American bookings for the foreseeable future, citing the Trump administration’s stance on immigration, trans rights and more; the last U.S. show he played was in February, with the CSO. Pianist András Schiff likewise added the U.S. to a short list of countries he has vowed to never perform in, which includes Russia and his native Hungary. And Renée Fleming, once a creative consultant to Lyric Opera, stepped down from a similar position at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after staff and board changes.

Amid other artist boycotts of the Kennedy Center earlier this year, Yankovskaya conducted "The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs," an opera about the prickly Apple founder composed by former CSO composer-in-residence Mason Bates, at Washington National Opera, the venue’s resident company. Yankovskaya says she would have certainly considered backing down if asked to lead, say, a Kennedy Center gala. But she found the idea of performing that specific opera, at a venue with a distinctly bipartisan audience, appealing.

“This was an opera specifically about a tech magnate who let power get to his head and who treated people badly, and the kind of impact that it had on those people and the world around him,” Yankovskaya said.

During the opening week of "Steve Jobs," Yankovskaya wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post explaining her decision to go forward at the Kennedy Center. She wrote that, while she sympathized with artists’ decisions to withdraw from the venue, she considered them “misguided” and a form of “self-censorship.”

Reactions to the op-ed were, predictably, divisive.

“I think it feeds into this idea of squashing art and killing personal expression,” Yankovskaya said. “What we should be trying to do is flooding the country with as much thought-provoking art as possible.”

On that point, Yankovskaya has personal experience to lean on. In 1995, she, along with her mother and sister, arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from the Soviet Union, escaping a rising tide of antisemitism. Yankovskaya can still remember when foreign artists first started trickling into the Soviet Union, during a détente in the Cold War.

Her op-ed also pointed to the precedent set by Dmitri Shostakovich, a composer who wrote under severe artistic restrictions imposed by Joseph Stalin’s regime. Despite the limits on Shostakovich’s speech during his lifetime, his music is often considered a Trojan horse for Soviet suffering during the period, wordlessly expressing what average people were going through. His music is still performed regularly today as a parable for resilience under fascism.

Yankovskaya emphasized that several nonpolitical factors are driving her relocation to the U.K., too. For one, she’s already conducting a great deal in Europe to begin with. Those stints can be several weeks long if she’s working on an opera production, as opposed to the few-day span of orchestra concert cycles. A European home base makes it easier to zip home here and there. (Yankovskaya has two young children, ages 6 and 3.)

Composer Shawn Okpebholo, who has worked with Yankovskaya at both Chicago Opera Theater and the CSO, grieves her departure from the Chicago classical music landscape. Having a new-music champion like Yankovskaya in his backyard was “huge,” he told WBEZ.

“She's very connected, she's loyal, she's an advocate,” Okpebholo said. “She's a person I can call if I have a question, whether it's about opera or something else I'm working on.”

Meanwhile, Okpebholo’s collaborators have taken very different approaches to the Kennedy Center question. He’s written music for Rhiannon Giddens, who was one of the first high-profile artists to cancel an engagement at the Kennedy Center earlier this year. On the other hand, in March, soprano and Lyric Opera artist-in-residence Karen Slack proceeded with her previously scheduled Kennedy Center recital featuring "African Queens," a song cycle partially composed by Okpebholo.

Okpebholo told WBEZ he understood both colleagues’ perspectives.

“Do you say, ‘You know what, I'm gonna move this [to another venue]’? Or do you stand your ground and say, ‘You're not gonna take this away from us?’ ” he asked.

Yankovskaya said she has plans to return to Chicago after her Ravinia adieu on Saturday. Next spring, she will return for an engagement with Chicago Opera Theater. Plus, her family still lives here, including her mother, with whom she fled Russia 30 years ago. And in the U.S. broadly, she has more projects in store with the Refugee Orchestra Project, an ensemble she founded at the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, in 2016. That includes a residency at Brooklyn venue National Sawdust, featuring Afghan musician and composer Milad Yousufi.

“These are people who believe in what America has to offer. They believe in these ideas of freedom, of multiculturalism, of being able to work hard to reach your goals, and having the ability to do so,” Yankovskaya said. “These people have the enthusiasm of converts into the American dream.”

As did Yankovskaya.

Hannah Edgar is a Chicago-based culture writer. Their work appears regularly in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Musical America and Downbeat.