Ukrainian composer, cellist, teacher; one of the founders of the Ukrainian Music Institute of America (USA).
Biography.
He was born on July 27, 1895, in the town of Zolotyi Potik (now the village of Chortkiv district, Ternopil region, Ukraine) in the family of a government official. In 1914, he graduated from a high school in Chernivtsi.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he was mobilized into the Austrian army, where he rose to the rank of corporal. He was taken prisoner and spent two years in the Monte Cassino camp (Kingdom of Italy), where he wrote the most famous of his songs, "The Golden Sun Shone" with lyrics by Stepan Pylypenko.
After his release, he went to Berlin, where he studied at the University at the Faculty of Philology and the Stern Conservatory. After graduation, he worked at the Ukrainian gymnasium in Pidhaitsi, Ternopil region, and at the same time directed the Boyan men's choir.
From 1928, he worked as a German teacher at the Polish gymnasium in Stanislaviv, and later as a director and teacher at the Stanislaviv branch of the Mykola Lysenko Higher Music Institute and conductor of the Boyan Choir.
During the German occupation, he was the conductor of the Ivan Franko Music and Drama Theater. He conducted the following performances: "A Cossack Beyond the Danube," "Natalka Poltavka," and "Kateryna."
In the spring of 1944, he emigrated to Germany (Bayreuth Ukrainian camp for displaced persons), where he created a choir and taught German at the camp gymnasium founded by Ukrainian emigrants.
In 1948, he emigrated to the United States, where he organized the Ukrainian Music Institute in New York and became a professor and member of its board, directing the Boyan Women's Choir. He performed as a conductor and cellist.
He died in New York on June 25, 1970. He was buried in St. Andrew's Cemetery in the town of South Bound Brook. The opening phrase of the song "The Golden Sun Shone" is engraved on the composer's tombstone.
