For your
GRAMMY®
consideration
Best Classical Compendium
Yogis of Ukraine
Sandrine Rudaz, composer & conductor · Tina Guo, cello
Best Classical Compendium
Yogis of Ukraine
Sandrine Rudaz, composer & conductor · Tina Guo, cello
Forty-two pieces for string orchestra and five soloists, most of them taking their titles from the words of Ukrainian women who kept practising and teaching yoga through the invasion. Seventy-seven minutes, built on four themes: war, yoga, Ukraine, awakening.
Sandrine Rudaz wrote the music and conducted the fifty-two players in Budapest. The album accompanies Bob Degus’s documentary of the same name.
“I wrote four themes rather than working piece by piece, because I wanted the album to hold together as a single work.”
Sandrine Rudaz
One piece from each.
Bandura — Tetiana Mazur, recorded in Kyiv
Hear all forty-two pieces:
Composer & conductor
A Swiss composer and conductor. She entered the conservatory at three for classical piano and stayed fifteen years, then took a BA in Music at the Conservatory of Lausanne and a CAS in conducting at the Zurich University of the Arts. She wrote all forty-two pieces on this album and stood on the podium for the Budapest sessions. Three-time winner at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards and a Jerry Goldsmith Award nominee.
Cello
A GRAMMY®-nominated cellist whose playing carries Hans Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme, and who appears on Inception and Dunkirk. Here she plays the solo cello line on twenty of the forty-two pieces — the instrument that does most of the speaking on this record.
These pieces began with the women’s own words. Most of the forty-two take their titles from something one of them said — Parents Dig to Find Their Children, Notes for My Children’s Pockets, We Are Not Afraid.
I expected to be writing about endurance. What these women actually talk about is hope, and happiness, and what they have learned in the worst years of their lives.
I conducted the sessions myself. Fifty-two players in a room is not the same as the music in your head, and I wanted to make the adjustments while everyone was still there.
Sandrine Rudaz
The orchestra recorded over two days in March 2026 at Budapest Scoring Studio: fifty-two string players, with a quartet drawn from the same session for the pieces that needed to be smaller. The four guest soloists recorded separately — Tina Guo in Santa Monica, Luanne Homzy in Los Angeles, Julie Elven in Munich, Tetiana Mazur in Kyiv. GRAMMY®-winning engineer Eva Reistad mixed and mastered the album.
“The goal was to make it big and wide, to open the emotions at the stronger level — the very deep of the bass, the very high of the violins. Then sometimes just a string quartet, because things were smaller, more intimate.”
Sandrine Rudaz
Yogis of Ukraine
Sandrine Rudaz
Released 24 August 2026
42 pieces · 77:05
Many of the titles come from what these women said: Olesia Stoianova, Yana Orenchyna-Kulaha, Julia Chernenko, Anastasiia Rubel, Inga Krivorot, Vladyslava Reprintseva, Daria Pokotylo and others.
Veér Csongor · Selmeczi Gábor · Szilágyiné Kirkósa Ágnes · Dulay Krisztina Judit · Veér Bertalan · Ilosfai Dorka · Gál Károly · Igaz Ibolya · Filóné Nagy Eszter · Morzsa Róbert · Gubis Géza · Makó Brigitta · Sawada Aya · Csukly Anna · Stankowsky Balázs
Horváth Róbert · Dózsa Lajos Péter · Rónaszéki Tamás · Tóth Gabriella · Kanyurszky Péter · Kalmus Boglárka · Molnár Dávid · Sándor Zoltán · Hegyi Miklós · Holló Judit · Vajda Norbert · Kiss Melinda · Draskóczy Ágnes · Szentpétery Csenge
Radnai Róbert · Sörös Jenő · Lezsák Attila · Markó János · Lukács Attila · Tuza Boglárka Mária · Rácz Katalin Edit · Nemesi Judit
Kurucz Krisztián · Gál Béla · Kószás Ágnes · Báthori Borbála · Villányi Péter · Sándor Anita
Lázár Gyula Balázs · Mohácsi Norbert · Bóni Andor · Hosszú Kristóf · Id. Puporka Jenő · Keszei Attila · Rádli Ramóna · Polonskiy Andrey · Prekup Zsolt
Hungarian personnel are listed family name first. Music © 2026 Sandrine Rudaz.
Forty-two pieces, written from what these women said, recorded by fifty-two players in Budapest.
Yogis of Ukraine · Best Classical Compendium
