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The profile · researched 25 September 2026
The Kyiv orchestra that turned an idle theatre pit into a fifteen-city American tour
Lords of the Sound began in 2014 as a producer's fix for an unused provincial theatre orchestra and now runs film-score programmes across Europe in parallel units; after a visa collapse killed its first attempt, it finally played the United States in March 2026.
An idle pit orchestra in Bila Tserkva
The orchestra started as a producer's answer to a practical problem. Andrii Novatorov, working with a theatre in Bila Tserkva, south of Kyiv, noticed that the house orchestra sat unused for long stretches of the year. He had been turning over an idea since 2012: an ensemble that would play film and video-game scores, a repertoire almost absent from Ukrainian concert programming at the time. The players were there and the music was not being performed, so he put the two together.
The group he assembled took the name Lords of the Sound and gave its first concert on 23 April 2014, in a modest hall at an artists' house in Kyiv, under the title 100% SOUNDTRACKHITS. That evening set the template: film music played straight, by a full orchestra, with staging and lighting treated as part of the job rather than decoration. The ensemble has since recruited young players through competitive auditions and built itself into a touring operation that plays dozens of concerts a year, first around Ukrainian cities and then across Europe.
Twenty programmes, three hundred pieces
The orchestra's own catalogue now runs to more than 300 compositions across roughly twenty thematic programmes, which is the mechanism that keeps it on the road. The current line-up of shows includes The Music of Hans Zimmer, The Lord of the Rings in Concert built on Howard Shore's scores for both the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, Music is Coming, which gathers Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, Vikings, Dune and Harry Potter, the Harry Potter programme Magic Symphony, an Adele tribute, a Morricone evening, a combined Morricone and Einaudi programme, and an anime show, 38 Samurai, drawing on Naruto, Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer.
Two conductors share the work, Shahrokh Fathizadeh and Nazar Yakobenchuk, with Fathizadeh credited for much of the original arranging. Alongside the standard orchestral forces the ensemble carries a rock rhythm section and Ukrainian folk instruments, including the bandura, tsymbaly, kobza, sopilka and trembita, which require players trained in techniques the conservatoire circuit does not routinely supply. Vocal soloists are a fixed part of the format rather than guests: Illia Skrebnov and Yaroslava Taran front the Zimmer programme, and the countertenor Yaroslav Radionenko has featured on recent runs.
Wartime touring, and a visa that stopped a tour
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 the orchestra has run charity tours raising money for Ukrainian refugees and for the military, and it performs Ukrainian works at every concert. The touring personnel are drawn from Ukraine, Hungary, Italy and Moldova. In January 2026 the orchestra spent eleven days in Israel, playing eleven concerts between the 10th and the 20th in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashkelon — its second Israeli tour, and unusual at a time when most international acts were staying away. The promoter Semyon Galperin, who moved to Haifa after the 2022 invasion, told the Times of Israel simply that very few international acts were coming and that he was glad these musicians wanted to.
The American story was less straightforward. A United States tour had been booked for spring 2025, with The Lord of the Rings in Concert due at the Town Hall in New York on 6 March 2025. It did not happen. The orchestra cited unforeseen visa problems that made the tour impossible as planned, the dates were pulled across the schedule, and the whole run was pushed back a year with no replacement dates announced at the time.
The American debut, March 2026
The rescheduled tour ran from 1 to 20 March 2026 and took the Zimmer programme to fifteen East Coast and Midwest theatres: Stamford on the 1st, the Emerson Colonial in Boston on the 3rd, the Town Hall in New York on the 4th, the Palace in Albany on the 5th, the Kodak Center in Rochester on the 6th, Shea's Buffalo on the 7th, the Morris in South Bend on the 10th, Butler Arts Center in Indianapolis on the 11th, the Palace in Columbus on the 12th, the KeyBank State Theatre in Cleveland on the 14th, the State Theatre in Ithaca on the 15th, Crouse Hinds in Syracuse on the 17th, the Miller Theater in Philadelphia on the 18th, the Lyric in Baltimore on the 19th and Santander in Reading on the 20th. Yakobenchuk conducted, with Skrebnov and Taran as soloists.
The programme advertised for the run drew on Dune, The Dark Knight, Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, Interstellar, Sherlock Holmes, The Lion King and Man of Steel. Previews ahead of the Ohio dates flagged the folk instruments — bandura, tsymbaly, sopilka — as the element that separates this ensemble from the many touring film-music shows working the same repertoire, and credited Novatorov and Yakobenchuk with the electronic-and-orchestral blend the group uses.
Two tours at once, and where the diary goes next
The scale of the operation shows up in the calendar rather than in any press release. The Israeli run in January 2026 overlapped almost exactly with a Polish one: Warsaw on the 9th, Kraków on the 10th, Bielsko-Biała on the 11th, Łódź on the 12th, Toruń on the 13th, Katowice on the 15th and Poznań on the 17th. Coverage of the Israeli visit noted that the orchestra runs tours in parallel, which is the only way both diaries can be true. Earlier European work includes a 60-date run in France and 30 dates in Germany.
The forward schedule keeps the Zimmer programme as the lead product. Belgium comes next, with Hasselt on 14 October 2026 and Antwerp on 15 October, followed by Swedish dates in December 2026 and a Nordic block in early 2027 — Karlstad on 31 January, Herning in Denmark on 4 February, and Kristiansand and Bergen in Norway later that month. No further American dates have been announced since the March run closed in Reading.
The show, now
There is no support act: the orchestra plays the whole evening, around fifty musicians with a rock kit and electric guitar sitting inside the strings and brass, and animated film-derived video running on a screen behind them. The Zimmer programme as played at the State Theatre in Ithaca on 15 March 2026 moved through a Pirates of the Caribbean suite, Interstellar, Dune, Madagascar, Gladiator and No Time to Die, and stepped outside Zimmer's catalogue for Ramin Djawadi's Game of Thrones music. The vocal soloists are staged as performers rather than stood at a microphone — the Bond sequence included a mock duel — and Yaroslava Taran drew particular praise for the Gladiator material and for the Billie Eilish title song. The reviewer's reservation was about balance: the modern percussion and amplification suit the heavier cues but rolled over quieter writing, notably Up Is Down in the Pirates medley. The Ithaca house skewed young, with a large student contingent. Ukrainian works are programmed into every concert on the tour, a practice the orchestra has kept since 2022.
Researched from thetownhall.org · thetownhall.org · lordsofthesound.com · lordsofthesound.com · lordsofthesound.us · cornellsun.com · timesofisrael.com · news.nikk.co.il