Zenbarn, Rotary bring Ukrainian folk music & fundraising to Waterbury Aug. 30

August 21, 2025 | By Gwenna Peters | Correspondent 

Dan Murphy has been prospecting for new and interesting music for Zenbarn’s award-winning music venue for years. 

Band poster courtesy of Kommuna Lux

A year ago, a band from Ukraine and their music caught his attention. “They resonated with me,” he said.

The band had to forfeit their slot at GlobalFest due to issues related to the ongoing war, immigration, and visas. The band called Kommuna Lux (“Community of Light” in English) had won the prestigious German folk music prize, the Iron Eversteiner, which propelled them into the spotlight for world music. 

They describe their sound as “Klezmer, Balkan, and Urban Chanson, with a dash of Ukrainian folk.” All of the band members are classically trained musicians from the city of Odesa who got their start playing in the markets and streets and soon landed on local and national stages. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed everything and prompted the band to make their contribution to the war effort by going on tour. 

Since June 2022, Kommuna Lux has played in 14 countries, from Poland, Slovakia and Germany, to Switzerland, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Israel. In North America, they’ve played across Canada and more than 75 shows in the U.S. Their 2023 schedule included a stop at Radio Bean in Burlington. 

Murphy contacted the Waterbury Rotary Club when he learned that the band is raising funds in conjunction with the online Rotary Club in Ukraine, which has been fundraising to purchase beds for burn patients at a hospital in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. 

Unfortunately, Russian forces were getting close to Kramatorsk. For fear that the city would be captured and the status of the hospital was uncertain, the Rotary group pivoted to a new project called “Ukrainian children do not have a stop button.” The project aims to assist displaced families with preschool-aged children at risk of developmental delays.

The band is now touring in the U.S. with 21 shows on their schedule. Zenbarn’s Aug. 30 date is one of two performances in Vermont, with the other the prior night in St. Johnsbury.

The band’s coordinator, Jeanine Renne, was available for interviews. She explained that the band is touring now with five members playing clarinet, trumpet, accordion, and percussion. Three of the band’s regular members are not performing because they have enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, she said. She described the musicians as young men with families – parents, wives, children – all who have been affected by the war. 

“Several times when we've been on tour, Odesa has been bombed. Can you even imagine what it’s like for these guys, to be here in the USA and they are scheduled to go on stage and perform this fun, happy music… knowing that bombs are dropping on their families right at that moment?” 

Renne shared that the band’s current trumpet player had taken refuge in Austria for a time. He missed his father’s funeral earlier this year because he did not think he would have been able to leave Ukraine had he returned, she said. “I know it broke his heart,” she added. 

Renne explained that the band members feel a sense of purpose and are motivated to share their music and fundraise to help their country. She noted that they have stopped playing some of their folk songs that were traditionally sung in Russian, however. 

She summed up the tour saying, “The fact is these are a bunch of smart, talented, good-looking guys, playing interesting, fun, family-friendly music, and they have hearts of gold, raising money for their country that is at war.”

The tour schedule has the band very busy, with little time to experience the various cities they are visiting, Renne said. They sometimes stay in places where they are able to cook, she said, and their favorite comfort food from home to make on the road is borscht soup. 

Original Kommuna Lux band members. Courtesy photo

Ultimately, the band members’ roles on the road in America are ones of ambassadors, sharing their music, traditions and culture at a time when their homeland is in crisis. As they criss-cross the U.S., they are connecting with audiences who connect with the klezmer sound, their unique folk roots, or just their ties to a country in the news daily. 

Renne said Kummuna Lux has gotten attention along the way, pointing to an article from an online arts publication in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that highlighted the band before its performance in a summer music festival there last year. “You’d be hard-pressed to think of a more fun, entertaining way to support Ukraine than to see Odesa-based, klezmer/‘gangster folk’ band Kommuna Lux play,” it said.

Renne said the “gangster folk” theme is rooted in folk music of the 1920s, speakeasies and even pickpockets in Odesa, a port city where “anyone can leave their checkered past behind and start a new life.”

Kommuna Lux plays Zenbarn on Saturday, Aug. 30, at 8 p.m. Purchase tickets online; $20 advance, $25 day of the show. The band also plays a free outdoor concert in St. Johnsbury, at 7 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 29, as part of the Leavitt AMP concert series.   

Waterbury Rotary plans to make a $500 to the band’s fundraising and has contacted Stowe, Mad River Valley and Montpelier Rotary chapters to contribute as well. 

See more about the band and sample their music on their website and YouTube channel.

Gwenna Peters is a member of Waterbury Rotary and a contributing writer for the Waterbury Roundabout.