By Pastor Virviescas Gómez - Special for AlDia News

This Wednesday, September 25 at 7:30 p.m., a shock wave will break the sound barrier and from the city of Bucaramanga (Colombia, South America) in a matter of minutes it will travel 10,609 kilometers to reach Moscow by surprise, without the anti-aircraft batteries being able to intercept it.

It is only for maestro Eduardo Carrizosa Navarro to give the order with his baton, so that this composition by the Ukrainian-Bumanguean Dmytro Borisovich Ryeznik resounds like the bombings and tank shots that since February 24, 2022 have kept that region of Europe and the entire planet on edge in the event of a conflict on a global scale.

It will be 18 minutes and 12 seconds (coinciding with Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky's Overture 1812) in which fifty members of the UNAB Symphony Orchestra will perform the Overture "War 22", the way in which an artist wields not the weapons of the aggressors, but an even more forceful one: music. The dissonances, the snare drums and the percussion will allow the audience to get into the heat of combat, with their seats as a trench.

He was born on November 2, 1967 in the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk (the second largest in the Donbass region), where before the war there lived about 105,000 people and for the battle that took place from May 12 to June 25, a few thousand civilians remained, until it passed under the control of the Russian troops that left it destroyed. He became a professional at the Donetsk Conservatory, at the ‘suggestion’ of his father who left him no other option.

Dmytro Borisovich Ryeznik, professor at UNAB University (Colombia), with the Conn trombone that a friend brought him from the United States. In the background, the flag of his native country: Ukraine. / Photo by Pastor Virviescas Gómez

He was tempted to return to his homeland, where most of his family and friends still remain, but he put aside his anger and chose to declare himself in resistance by composing a work that will undoubtedly move those who want to hear it at the Santander Theater, on the 26th at the UNAB Main Auditorium and on the 27th at the ‘Luis A. Calvo’ Auditorium of the Industrial University of Santander (UIS).

If the saying “whoever steps on Santander soil is from Santander” applies to everything, Ryeznik is as much of ours as the yellow arepa and the baked goat, since he has not only lived 26 years in these crags, but has also contributed to the training of hundreds of musicians as well as to the regional culture by also directing the Big Band, a group that with perseverance and desire has shown the locals that in this branch of reggaeton it is also possible to listen to jazz even if they have not set foot in New Orleans. He has also been part of the tropical orchestra Rey & Rey, traveling through cities and towns to the sound of salsa and merengue. The only thing that does not seduce him is the mute, but he knows more about gastronomy, customs and culture than many who have not gone beyond the Chicamocha River. Dmytro arrived in Bucaramanga in 1998 with a couple of changes of clothes, his trombone and a suitcase full of books, attracted by the comment of a colleague who encouraged him to make his way in this remote American destination, plus the nod of his compatriot Irina Litvin. The agreement was sealed with the visit of maestro Sergio Acevedo Gómez to Ukraine. Along with him were a dozen Ukrainians and Russians who, without speaking a word of Spanish, dared to explore this country of pasillos, guabinas, torbellinos and Peruvian cumbias in search of better economic conditions after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which led to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the war that has left more than 31,000 soldiers dead on the Ukrainian side and 50,000 in the Russian ranks, shattered that relationship of brotherhood, even with a couple of countrymen who leaned towards the other side, which is why he deleted them from his cell phone.

Today he seems confident that sooner rather than later the big loser will be President Vladimir Putin. By that longed-for moment – ​​if the United States and other allies maintain the fundamental support to get ahead – he will have another composition ready in which the roar of missiles and shells will be a settled chapter and, instead, will be inspired by the resurgence of a country that has fought at least twenty wars with the neighboring empire, since the sacking of kyiv in 1169.

However, each day that passes is just a page of the constant uncertainty about the situation of his brother Igor, who took refuge in a small town in western Ukraine, or that of his own children Maria (35) and Ivan (33), who live in Russia with as much or more conviction that the flag of blue and yellow stripes – with roots in pre-Christian times – will wave sovereign in the sky and in the wheat fields, with the Trýzub in which the trident and freedom merge.

Of the music institute where Dmytro took his first lessons, nothing remains but ruins. “The wounds will heal, but the scars will remain,” he ends.