Ukrainian musicologist, permanent director of the Chervona Ruta Festival, resident of Kyiv.
From his biography
He was born on January 17, 1954.
From 1972 he studied at the Kyiv Conservatory, but in 1977, in his fifth year, he was expelled for "bourgeois nationalism" and sent to "correctional labor" at a factory, where he worked for two years as a mechanic. He graduated from the conservatory in 1980, and in 1982-1985 he studied at the postgraduate course at the Moscow Conservatory, specializing in musical folklore (1982-85; class of V. Shchurova),
In 1980-1982, he worked as a lecturer at the Department of Music Education at the Nizhyn State Pedagogical Institute named after M. Gogol. Later he taught the history of Ukrainian music at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine.
In 1989, together with Kyrylo Stetsenko and other friends, he managed to organize and hold the first festival of Ukrainian-language music "Chervona Ruta" in Chernivtsi.
According to the memoirs of Yurii Lukanov, who was the press secretary and PR manager of the first Chervona Ruta (1989), Taras Melnyk went to the leadership of the Komsomol of Ukraine and managed to convince them to allocate funds for the festival, as perestroika was underway and the Komsomol was required to demonstrate progressiveness.
He is a holder of the Order of Merit III degree. He was awarded for his significant personal contribution to the development of Ukrainian musical art, high professionalism, and on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the first All-Ukrainian Festival of Contemporary Song and Popular Music "Chervona Ruta".
He was married to Olha Volodymyrivna Melnyk. He had a daughter Solomiia, born in 1984. His eldest daughter Yaroslava died in 2005.
He had been ill with COVID-19 for more than a month and was in serious condition in a hospital in Uzhhorod. He died on January 22, 2022 (the cause of death was not reported).
