Ukrainian musician abandoned his dream to help his family flee war. Now in Vancouver, he rekindles hope

Nikolai Dorosh learned his country was at war at 4:30 in the morning when the sounds of explosions woke him and his family at their apartment.

It was February 24, 2022.

Dorosh, his wife Toma and their three young children, along with another family, hurriedly packed themselves into a Chrysler Town & Country sedan, along with a dog and two suitcases, and drove out of Kyiv, headed for Ukraine’s border with Poland.

The families left almost everything behind, but, before abandoning their apartment, Dorosh made sure he had one possession: his cello.

During the three days at the border waiting to cross, the accomplished, 45-year-old classical musician kept the cello close. The instrument was expensive – he’d spent the equivalent of $38,000 for it in 2017 — but it wasn’t just that.

“An instrument may seem like a piece of wood,” Dorosh, who now lives in Vancouver, said in Ukrainian. “But it has feelings.”

Acquiring that cello had changed his life.

An instrument that isn’t quite right for a musician “starts to resist you,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a recent interview. “So when you find that instrument that is part of you, it’s almost like a relationship. It’s something very personal and deep.”

Which is why he’s still mourning the cello’s loss. In the weeks after fleeing home, the war refugee, desperate to feed his family and find a safe place for them to live, decided he had to sell the precious instrument. As a result, he took an extended break from playing music, for the first time in decades.

“When you sell something that’s so deeply a part of you, it’s really hard to get back to it,” he said. “It’s almost like a divorce.”

***

At 10-years-old Nikolai Dorosh knew he wanted to play cello for the rest of his life. Inspired by his older brother, who played guitar, he initially wanted to learn the double bass.

“They said I was too small,” he said, laughing as he recalled the moment. Despite a naturally reserved demeanor, he smiles when recounting memories — even the painful ones.

Instead of the upright bass, young Nikolai picked the cello, and soon he knew he’d found the right instrument.

After years of study while growing up in Ukraine, he launched a professional career as a cellist that has notched impressive highs.

He has performed with top symphonies, such as the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. He contributed to Grammy-nominated classical recordings and toured internationally.

“When we got married, practicing the cello at home, sheet music, concerts, tours and rehearsals became a part of our family,” Toma Dorosh, his wife, said.

But it wasn’t professional acclaim that drove him, Nikolai Dorosh said. He needed to create music with the cello, longed for it.

“The sound of the cello sounds most like a human voice,” he said. “It truly is that way, and the instrument just grew close to my heart.”

When you reach a certain level as a classical musician, you need to have the right instrument, the perfect one for you. It can take years to find it, and, when you do, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars. When Nikolai Dorosh started looking for his perfect cello, he often worried he’d never find it.

Then he connected with celebrated cello maker Gabriele Jebran Yakoub, who is based in Berlin. He joined the queue for one of Yakoub’s handmade cellos.

Most musicians who want one of Yakoub’s cellos have to wait at least five years – he does not work quickly, plus he wants to make sure you’re truly serious about the instrument.

But Yakoub and Nikolai Dorosh hit it off, becoming friends. And the Ukrainian musician’s commitment to the cello was obvious. He only had to wait for a year.

Once he got it, in 2017, he knew he had his dream cello – one that played with him, that was part of him.

“How would you react to it?” Nikolai Dorosh said. “If you got something that’s beyond your dreams, something that’s beyond the normal wish, normal desire?”

But then, driven from his home by war, with no money and few prospects, he had to give up his prized possession, selling the cello in Poland for less than he had paid for it a few years before.

In 2022, Nikolai Dorosh and his family relocated to the United States through a government program that connects displaced Ukrainians from the war with U.S. sponsors. The family arrived in Vancouver, where they slowly got back on their feet. Nikolai worked side jobs driving for Uber and Amazon. Toma worked as a hairdresser.

“It’s hard,” Nikolai Dorosh said. “You don’t come as a tourist. You come here and this is now your life. You start everything all over again. It’s one thing to start at 20, and it’s a whole different thing to start at 40.”

It was just as challenging for Toma Dorosh.

“For me, moving to a different country, with a different culture, and starting life from scratch wasn’t easy,” she said. “But this country was built by those who came and started from scratch.”

Though he’s in his 40s, Nikolai Dorosh isn’t too old to serve in Ukraine’s military – the country’s desperate situation means conscription now reaches to age 60. Dorosh was given an exemption because he has three young children, he said.

The war in his homeland, and the feeling that he can’t do anything about it, weighs on him, he said. He keeps in touch as best he can with family members, friends and colleagues who are still in Ukraine.

“Many of my fellow musicians, whom I know personally, are now fighting in the war,” he said. “Sadly, many of them have already been killed. You can never negotiate with absolute evil, especially when its only goal is to destroy a nation.”

Nikolai Dorosh said that for months he couldn’t even think about playing music – his creative impulse had been sapped by the war.

But then he happened to step into Beacock Music, a shop in Vancouver.

He recalled the moment, with tears brimming his eyes. He had no intention of even touching a cello when he walked into the store with a friend, but when he spotted the instrument there, it hit him in the gut.

He knew at that moment he needed to start playing again.

***

Nikolai Dorosh bought a cello and started practicing after work. He taught music at a school in Vancouver, and then he began seeking opportunities to play for audiences, sending out letters to local symphonies.

It wasn’t long before people in the region’s classical-music community recognized his talent. He received an invitation to perform at the Willamette Falls Symphony, a community orchestra in Oregon City. In 2023, he was invited to play at the Oregon Mahler Festival.

His need to play restored, he began to let himself hope and dream again.

“At first it was just sort of a vague idea, just floating around in my head,” Nikolai Dorosh said of returning to playing professional gigs. “I understand that I have a responsibility to my family to provide, but I felt I could do that and also do the thing I love and that I’m good at.”

Hamilton Cheifetz, an emeritus professor of cello at Portland State University, met Nikolai Dorosh shortly after Dorosh’s first gig with the Willamette Falls Symphony.

Cheifetz was impressed, saying Dorosh “plays with a lot of heart.” He said it’s rare to come across someone playing at his level.

“I think it’s kind of the mission and the job of a musician to really communicate something, so that people feel something,” Cheifetz said. “When I’ve heard Nikolai play, it’s always touched me. It’s not just his [personal] story, it’s what comes through in his playing. He has something to say.”

Cheifetz helped the cellist make connections, and Nikolai Dorosh in the past two years has played with the Oregon Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Yakima Symphony Orchestra and the Portland Chamber Orchestra.

But making a living as a classical musician in the U.S. is tough.

Cheifetz attests to the difficulties Nikolai Dorosh faces in restarting his career. Getting a salaried job with an American symphony is hard even for an accomplished, experienced musician, he said. Most classical musicians play side gigs with symphonies and teach on the side.

Nikolai Dorosh, who’s found safety for his family and built a new life for them in the U.S., is determined to stay positive.

“It’s true that the [classical-music] system in the United States is different from Europe, but I’ve stopped comparing,” he said. “I live here now, and my job is to adapt to the new reality.”

Part of that new reality is playing a cello that doesn’t communicate intimately with him. The one he has now is a good instrument, but it’s not top-of-the-line, he said. It’s not his cello. It’s not a musical marriage.

There are pieces he just can’t play on the cello he has now, he said, and this limits his creative satisfaction as well as his professional opportunities.

Yakoub has offered him a discount for a replacement cello, but even with the price break, a new first-rate instrument still would be more than $40,000. The Doroshes don’t have that kind of money. Nikolai asked his wife if he should try to find a way to make it happen.

“He said to me, ‘What would you think if I bought a cello from Jebran again?,’” Toma Dorosh recalled. “I replied, ‘Of course I don’t mind,’” she said. “I understand how important it is for him, especially because it will help him move forward, grow and continue doing what he’s a true professional at.”

They have started fundraising online in hopes of raising money for the purchase.

Nikolai Dorosh has faith that he will once again find his way to one of Yakoub’s sublime cellos, allowing him to play to his full potential, for himself and for his beleaguered country – and for music lovers in the country that took them in.

“I cannot stop or give up,” he said. “My family is behind me, and at the very least, I must keep moving forward for their sake. I’ve been devoted to music for as long as I can remember, and it has long since become who I am.”

—Kimberly Cortez covers breaking news, public safety and more for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She can be reached at kcortez@oregonian.com