The bright and mega-talented Olena Karpenko (Solomia) is a singer, composer, writer and incredibly beautiful young woman who recently moved to California. She left a huge group of fans in Ukraine, and now we have the opportunity to get acquainted with her work.

In fact, Olena needs to be seen and heard live, because the colossal charge of energy that she radiates is felt with every fiber of her being, her voice makes you shiver, her poems force you to delve into the secret chambers of your soul, where your own cosmos lives. And in communication, Solomia is extremely sincere and friendly. The first time I heard her (then still a guest from her native Ukraine), I tried to come to my senses for several minutes, the world of her songs is so deep. Google and search for her on social networks, but for now - just a short interview with an interesting person who makes the world colorful.

Is your pseudonym Solomia somehow connected with the biblical namesake? Or maybe inspired by Krushelnytska?
In 2007, when I started performing abroad, I had a rather acute problem: foreigners do not remember and cannot pronounce my name well. And even for Ukrainians, “Olena Karpenko” sounds too “normal”. That is why I decided to choose a pseudonym. “Solo mio” in Italian means “my solo” (and I mostly give solo concerts). It sounds solar, sunny. In addition, of course, there is a hint of Solomia Krushelnytska. According to the rating compiled by the Metropolitan Opera at the end of the 20th century, she was among the ten most prominent opera singers in the world. And I am certainly her ardent fan. Few people have done so much to shape a positive international image of Ukraine. Well, the biblical Solomia, I hope, blesses good deeds from heaven. For someone who understands symbols and parallels, the word “Solomia” sounds like music, sun, Ukraine, and eternal values.

When did you first feel that you love to sing? And when did you first realize that you can’t help but sing?

It’s hard to say, because I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. I don’t even know what it’s like: not to sing. My parents tell me that I’ve wanted to perform since I was a little girl — ever since I learned to stand. My dad wrote songs for my older brother and accompanied him himself. When guests came, my brother would definitely sing. I, holding onto my brother’s leg for balance, would perform some kind of backing vocal that only I understood and take all the applause for myself. And at the age of five, they sent me to the Great Children’s Choir of the State Television and Radio of Ukraine, where I immediately became a soloist.

The feeling that I can’t live without singing came quite late. While I was studying at the conservatory, I lost my voice several times for short periods. That’s when I actually felt how helpless I am when I can’t sing. I hum constantly. Mostly, without even realizing it. Sometimes, on the street, in a store, in transport, people look at me – and only then do I realize that I was quietly purring under my breath.

Surprisingly, in Ukraine, people don’t accept it when someone sings just like that, on the street. I remember how my grandmother kept telling me: “Stop singing: the neighbors will hear!” And I still couldn’t understand: why is it bad for them to hear the song. I can hear their drunken screams well – and they don’t care… But abroad you can often meet people who sing: here a saleswoman is laying out fruit on the counter, here a painter is painting a wall, here a passerby is humming to the tunes in his headphones. And that’s how it gets good. The mood immediately rises. A song is energy. It needs to be shared. Then it lives. And if you muffle a song in yourself, “step on its throat”, then nothing good will come of it. Like any other energy, a song does not disappear, but is transformed. A “suppressed” song is wrong, insincere.

What song or melody do you most often sing while doing household chores?
Oh, now everyone will think that I’m posing or showing off… Hmm… Most often I sing Bach’s “Second Piano Partita”. I really love this ornate and intricate melody. It’s a great exercise for hearing and intonation. That’s why I often sing it while I’m washing dishes, cooking, or ironing. It’s a fairly fast-paced, difficult melody that, once you miss it, you can’t “pick it up.” For me, it’s like stretching, which ballerinas do.

In addition, I sing folk songs. Especially often, “At the end of the dam, the willows rustle” and “Oh, whose horse is standing.” I love inventing new chants in songs, harmonizing them, experimenting with tessitura and dramatic presentation of the text. It’s also a kind of “exercise.” Perhaps, it’s more similar in approach to the artistic etudes that actors do: when the same words can be pronounced with a hundred different intonations, finding new meanings and facets in a long-familiar text. Of course, I also sing something from popular music. Jazz and rock are a must. “Hit the Road Jack” and “Show Must Go On” are hits from my kitchen. And also opera arias. Norma, Lauretta, Violetta, Carmen are parts that are constantly “in my head”. I wash vegetables – a little Donizetti, I clean the room – Verdi, and for dessert – Bizet. Well, or meringue. That’s like a card.

If you go back to your childhood, what subject did you hate in school?
Mathematics. It was some kind of punishment from heaven. The last her math lesson in the eleventh grade was one of the happiest moments of my life. “That’s it,” I thought. “I’m free! Hurray! Never again!” Naive. At university, economics was waiting for me.

Do you think there is life on other planets? And if so, is there music there?

It would be too presumptuous to think that we are the only ones in the Universe. It seems that not so long ago, humanity just as fervently believed that the Sun revolves around the Earth. There was a lot of evidence for this, and the Inquisition burned anyone who disagreed at the stake. I do not exclude that humanity is in about the same situation today: it is likely that life forms that we do not understand exist, but we are unlikely to be able to find and understand them, given the available information base.

Who knows, maybe it is not necessary to look for a planet with properties similar to those of Earth. Suddenly, other entities are more comfortable in gas giants or endless frosty deserts? I don’t know. These are my assumptions. Like any person, I make mistakes. But I know one thing: music is a universal language. You don’t understand it so much as you feel it with your skin, heart, and gut. You “hear” it — like in “Avatar.” It can make you fall in love, establish a connection between souls on a subtle vibrational and emotional level, and find common values. Perhaps they — different from us — have their own language. And music has its own, different from our understanding of music. But it exists because there is a need for mutual understanding.

Your songs are incredible. The one you dedicated to Ukrainian soldiers struck me with its authenticity so much that I couldn’t hold back my tears. And how many songs are there in your oeuvre?
About three hundred.

I suspect that you believe in the reincarnation of souls. If so, who do you think you were in a past life? And who would you like to be in your next one?
I have a feeling that I used to be a man. And before that – probably, a long time ago – a tiger or one of the big cats. As for the next one… Why the next one? It’s a strange feeling… I guess I wouldn’t want to be reborn again. To paraphrase Natasha Rostova, “I would just pick myself up by the knees… and fly away” from this wheel of Samsara. If the “superiors” let me go, of course.

Solomiya, you are not only a singer and composer, you are also a very talented writer. Your novel “The Angel’s Handbook” has already been published in its second edition. There are Ukrainian and Russian versions of the text. An English translation has just been published. Do you believe in angels yourself?
The world is an unknowable diversity, much deeper, wider, and more meaningful than we can imagine. It is “everything and a little more.” Mathematicians would write this as n+. We do not know and cannot know everything that is, everything that happens and exists.

According to quantum theory, we live in a reality where components can be both particles and waves; in a reality where “Schrödinger’s cat” is both inanimate and not dead. And therefore, we depend on mysterious observers, which we ourselves may well be. Science is slowly coming to understand what philosophers, theologians, and psychologists have known for a long time: in a sense, we ourselves are the creators of our own reality.

So, if I am at least to some extent responsible for creating “my” reality, then miracles exist in it, angels live, cosmic energies flow. In it, sounds, prayers and thoughts are material, like a sour apple or neighbors behind the wall. I understand that to some it will seem banal, to some - too idealistic. But people are different. And our perception of reality is also different. That is why we choose different professions, hobbies, films and music.

Do you have a favorite book that you have read more than three times?
Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita". More than a dozen times - for sure. This book is not only a masterpiece of literature, where you can enjoy literally every word. And it also has a therapeutic effect on me. In the literal sense. When I feel that I am getting sick, I drink hot ginger tea with honey, lie down in bed and start reading "The Master". In the morning I have no fever, the book is read, I am tired, but normal.

Who from the modern literary process will become the future, in your opinion?
I won’t surprise anyone if I say that the names of Lina Kostenko and Yuriy Andrukhovych will remain in Ukrainian literature. Of the younger generation of authors — plus or minus my peers — I want to name Lesya Mudrak, Svitlana Didukh-Romanenko, Iryna Tsilyk, Maryana Savka, Bohdana Matiyash and Maryana Kiyanovska, as well as Serhiy Zhadan, Artem Chekh, Andriy Lyubka, Dmytro Lazutkin and Lyubko Deresh.

What do you dream of writing about?
I have many dreams, but not enough time, opportunities, talent, self-discipline, courage for everything… But what I really want is probably to create a Fairy Tale… Something similar to “Alice” and “The Little Prince”, but completely new, unique, different. With deep messages for both adults and children. So that the reality we are used to borders on another — more beautiful and varied. One where the impossible becomes possible. And it's real. In fact. Because we, humans, can also be both particles and waves at the same time. Both waves and particles. And also a little bit of "cats". For example, Cheshire cats. (laughs, - author)