Biography
Oleg Lysenko (b. 1974, Ukraine) trained at the Poltava Music College and then won a scholarship to the renowned Tchaikovsky National Music Academy in Kyiv. After graduating in 1999, Oleg released his first CD, Awakening, and continued his studies in the Netherlands at the Messiaen Academy. He then specialised in Argentine tango on bayan and bandoneon at the Rotterdam Conservatory. Together with fellow students, he won third prize in the ensemble category at the International Accordion Competition in Castelfidardo, Italy. Two years later, as a soloist, he won first prize at the National Accordion Competition in the Netherlands with his performance of Five Views of the Land of the Gulag Archipelago by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Victor Vlasov. The piece is also the title track of his 2012 CD.
Oleg has performed with, among others, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra alongside Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and with Sinfonia Rotterdam, with whom he gave the 2019 premiere of Alexander Nagaev’s Apocalypse of the 20th Century for bayan and orchestra. He has appeared in the Spiegelzaal (Mirror Hall) of the Concertgebouw for AVRO on Radio 4, and on the television programme Vrije Geluiden. Oleg has a passion for cross-genre projects in which visual art, literature and music complement and flow into one another. He has developed such projects with the writer and visual artist Armando and the sculptor and draughtsman Koenraad Tinel, as well as with writers, journalists and filmmakers including Stefan Hertmans, Cherry Duyns and Peter d’Hamecourt.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Oleg has given more than a hundred benefit concerts to raise money for ambulances and other medical supplies. He is co-founder and chair of Music for Ukraine, a foundation that combines fundraising for essential humanitarian aid to Ukraine with supporting and sharing Ukraine’s rich musical culture.