Mykhailo Manuliak (December 30, 1940, Lviv) is a Ukrainian composer, arranger, and music performer. Founder and first leader of the VIA Vatra.
He was born in Lviv. Initially he studied as an accordionist, but after becoming interested in jazz, he began to look for himself as a performer on various instruments (keyboards, organ, vibraphone), becoming a jazz musician-multi-instrumentalist. He worked in the Minsk (accordion soloist) and Lviv Philharmonic.
In 1971, he founded the Vatra vocal and instrumental ensemble at the Lviv Philharmonic. The ensemble's repertoire consisted almost exclusively of original Ukrainian-language songs and modern arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs. The lion's share of the ensemble's repertoire was composed by its director Mykhailo Manuliak. The main stylistic direction was jazz-rock and folk-jazz-rock (compositions "Dance of Thirst," "Campfire Smoke," "Oh Whose Horse Is That"). Vatra, led by Mykhailo Manuliak, was one of the pioneers of jazz rock in Ukraine.
After a triumphant tour in 1971 almost all over the Soviet Union, the KGB paid close attention to Mykhailo Manuliak as a dangerous enemy of the regime. Attempts to force Mykhailo Manuliak to move away from the repertoire policy aimed at developing modern trends in Ukrainian music failed, and after he refused to cooperate with the authorities and make concessions, he was removed from the leadership of the Vatra Vocal and Dance Company and dismissed from the Philharmonic. Lviv intellectuals came out in defense of Mykhailo Manuliak with an open letter. Among those who signed the letter were Ihor and Iryna Kalyntsi, Stefania Shabatura, Modest Novytskyi, and others. But by that time, most of the letter's signatories were already under investigation by the KGB as "bourgeois nationalists" and soon joined the ranks of political prisoners. Mykhailo Manuliak also came under severe persecution by the KGB and was forced to retire from active composing and performing.
In the 1980s and 1990s, he mainly wrote music for theater. In 1990, Mykhailo Manuliak and composer Roman Khabal created the first Ukrainian children's rock opera "The Magic Saber".
He lives and works in Lviv.
