Centurion of the UPR Army, conductor of military and choral groups.
Biography.
He was born in the village of Balky (now Vasylivka district, Zaporizhzhia region). After graduating from the village school, he entered the church-teacher school in Taganash, graduating in 1910. In 1913, he graduated from the conducting class of the Ardon Spiritual and Missionary Seminary. After graduation, he worked as a teacher of singing and graphic arts at the Prokhladny Higher School in Kabardino-Balkaria.
In 1916, with the beginning of the First World War, he was mobilized into the army and sent to the Chuhuiv Infantry School, and later to one of the grenadier regiments of the Moscow Military District. During his military service, he continued to study conducting at the Gnesin Music School (1916-17).
In 1918, Dmytro Kotko's unit, which was part of the 1st Volyn Corps, was relocated to Ukraine. In the army of the UPR and the UD, he served as an inspector of brass bands. After additional training in Rivne, he was promoted to officer, and from then on he led the military bands of the 1st Corps.
In 1919, he was taken prisoner by Poland near Proskuriv. In 1920, he was imprisoned in the Polish prison camp in Lantsut, where he initiated and led a choir that soon became the basis of the Ukrainian Naddniprians Choir. In 1922, the choir began performing in Poland, and in 1925, in Western Europe.
In 1930-36, on the initiative of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, he taught at the Lviv Theological Seminary and a women's gymnasium, where he also directed student choirs. In 1936 he organized the Trembita men's choir. After the occupation and subsequent annexation of western Ukraine by the USSR, the Trembita Chapel was organized on the basis of the choir.
At the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, Dmytro Kotko was on tour in Saratov. Together with the chapel, he evacuated to Almaty, where the group was disbanded in September 1941. A part of the chapel joined the Lviv Ukrainian Song and Dance Ensemble organized by Kotko at the Shymkent Philharmonic, which operated until the end of the war.
From 1945, he was the artistic director of the Hutsul Song and Dance Ensemble in Stanislav. In 1951, he was repressed on charges of "anti-Soviet propaganda and unreliability" and sentenced to 10 years in prison. After Stalin's death, he was released early (1956). After his release, he lived in Lviv, where he directed the Karpaty Bandura Choir at the Ukrainian Society for the Blind (1959-74). Among his students were conductors E. Vakhniak and V. Vasylevych. He was interested in painting, created landscapes: "Three Storks" (1958), "Mountain River" (1960), "Boat" (1963).
He died on November 18, 1982. He was buried at the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, field No. 82.
Honoring his memory
A street in Lviv is named after Dmytro Kotko.
