A former child prodigy from Russia is counting on Maritime generosity to help bring his mother to Canada so she can attend his university graduation.
Artem Kolesov left Russia at the age of 16 after receiving a full scholarship to Dalhousie University. The violinist had never been to Canada and didn’t speak English.
“I couldn’t explain my feelings and I couldn’t explain what I was feeling in the moment, so I would just start playing violin and that would explain to me and to listeners what is going on inside,” he says.
“For me, playing violin is almost like speaking a higher language.”
Kolesov, now 20, started playing the violin at age 6, at his mother’s encouragement. Kolesov’s father left his family when he was 12, so his mother raised her six sons on her own.
“She’s always been to every concert, every competition, and it’s just been very difficult because I’m used to that moral support,” he says.
Kolesov has only seen his mother once since moving to Nova Scotia from Russia five years ago. He hopes to change that and bring her to Halifax for his graduation in May, but the fall of Russia’s ruble and the country’s frosty relationship with Canada is making it difficult.
He hopes to raise $5,000 through an online fundraising campaign and has raised over $3,870 so far. The money will pay for his mother’s plane ticket, as well as a translator to convert her visa and other documents into English.
“To be honest, I didn’t think it was even going to work,” he says. “Since the Ukrainian and Russian crisis started, it’s been very difficult and they kind of toughened all the rules.”
Kolesov will graduate this spring with a Bachelor of Music. He hopes to take his master’s degree at a university in Chicago or Los Angeles next fall, but he says his short-term goal is personal, not professional.
“I like making people happy, and knowing she’s going to be happy is going to be…my biggest achievement, basically.”
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jayson Baxter
