Yurii Sydoriak (7 November 1947, Sambir) is a Ukrainian composer, arranger, trombonist and teacher.
He was born on 7 November 1947 in Sambir, Drohobych region. In 1954, he began his studies at a secondary school. In 1957, at the age of ten, his parents sent him to a private music school to study the accordion, to the teacher Mykola Klymenko, a former repressed sexton of the Greek Catholic Church in Sambir. Mykhailo Khai, now a folklorist and art historian at the Rylsky Institute of Ethnography, also studied violin there. In 1959, he entered the Music School, trombone class, with the teacher I. Vitriv. At that time, he was the only trombonist in the school and the school symphony orchestra conducted by Roman Pankiv.
In 1962, he entered the 1st year of the Sambir College of Culture, brass department, trombone and orchestral conducting. In his childhood, he participated in the performances of the combined city symphony orchestra of Sambir. In the same year, he was invited to join the newly created big band jazz orchestra of the city by the Galician pre-war musician and arranger Ivan Balovskyi, where he helped to instrument famous musical works and write his own compositions. Together with like-minded members of the orchestra, he created his own traditional Dixieland jazz ensemble, the Dnistriany, one of the first improvisational jazz orchestras in Western Ukraine and the whole of post-war Ukraine at that time. His experience in improvisation and instrumentation later came in handy when he was studying at the composition department of the Lviv Lysenko Conservatory.
In 1966, at the age of 19, he entered the Kharkiv Institute of Culture, Orchestral Department, where he studied with well-known professors Oleksandr Zhuk (co-author of the Anthem of the Ukrainian SSR), Doctor of Arts Ilya Polsky, Oleksandr Wallison, A. Eisenstadt, I. Baida, and others. As a student, he worked and played in the orchestras of the Operetta Theatre and the Kharkiv Circus. Sydoriak created the Dixieland Jazz Orchestra at the institute, which performed his own jazz compositions and arrangements, which found fans and followers in Kharkiv and on Kharkiv television in the 69-70s.
After graduating from the institute in 1972, he was sent to teach at the Sambir School of Culture in his native Galicia. In his native Sambir, he continued his creative activity, both in jazz bands and symphony orchestras, where he embodied his creative ideas in the arrangement and instrumentation of works and songs for different compositions of chamber, symphony and jazz orchestras, as well as in the creation and performance of his first compositions.
In 1972, he served his military service in the regimental brass band of Ovruch, where he combined conducting practice with playing in the band, due to the lack of a permanent conductor in the band at that time. He refused the offer of the division command to stay in the vacant position of the military leader of the orchestra and conductor, and returned to teaching at the Sambir institution, now the College of Culture.
In 1973, he married and had three children.
Creativity.
In 1978, he entered the 2nd year of the Composition Faculty of the Lviv Lysenko Conservatory to improve his creative composing skills, based on the results of his higher education and his existing works for symphony and chamber orchestras, vocalists and ensembles. In the same year, 1978, he became friends at the Conservatory with Volodymyr Ivasyuk, with whom he studied composition with prof. Mazepa Leszek Zygmundowicz (Mazepa Leszek Zygmundowicz) and Simovych Roman Appolonovych Simovych Roman Appolonovych (instrumentation), Flys Volodymyr Vasylovych Flys Volodymyr Vasylovych (polyphony), Emilia Kobuleia (analysis of musical forms), Yarema Yakubiak (harmony), Stefania Pavlyshyn (musicology), Natalia Savytska-Shvets (musicology), and others. Additionally, Mykola Filaretovych Kolesa had a six-month internship in symphonic conducting with Mykola Filaretovych Kolesa, which was an optional subject for students of composition. We often recalled with Mykola Filaretovych the fact that we were both Galicians, born in Sambir at different times. There are also good memories with Stanislav Pylypovych Liudkevych, who in those years still had frequent meetings with composers and theorists-students of the conservatory. A special relationship developed with his fellow student Volodymyr Ivasyuk, with whom he studied the basics of composition together, analysing all forms of composition from small pieces to symphonies. As fate would have it, in 1979, after Volodymyr's death in the Bryukhovychi forest, he was to be the one to put his body in the coffin at the morgue of the Lviv Medical Institute and, together with his parents, to be the last to see his face in the coffin in front of the cellar at the Lychakiv Cemetery.
During his studies at the Lviv Conservatory, he took part in republican competitions and congresses of composers, performing his own works. chamber orchestras of the Conservatory and the Philharmonic. His graduation work was the classical Symphony in 4 movements for large symphony orchestra, which was performed and conducted by the famous conductor Yurii Lutsiv with the Lviv Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in 1982.
During his studies at the Conservatory, some of his works and songs were recognised as winners at competitions in Kyiv, Moscow and Yerevan, and his Prelude and Fugue for String Quartet was often performed at competitions and concerts at the Conservatory by student performers. "Tritone Passacaglia" for piano was performed in Armenia at the Symposium of Contemporary Music and was recognised as a unique work of atonal music using tritone as an interval that combines both the vertical and horizontal structure of a modern polyphonic work and the author's thinking. The work was performed by pianists Yuriy Bon, Viacheslav Poliansky, and Anna Froliak-Havrylets. The Theme with Variations for piano was written in the same atonal and sonorous style, where the tritone is also used as the basis of the theme and harmonic structure. He paid special attention to composing works for string quartet and string and chamber orchestras, which were performed at the Conservatory and at festivals, including in Poland and London, during his student years. The string quartet was later transformed into the chamber work Reminiscences for String Orchestra, named in memory of the victims of the Chernobyl tragedy, written with extensive use of sonorous effects and the use of a 12-step dodecaphonic system, and opens up new means of expression. This is a continuation of the traditions of the famous Ukrainian contemporary composers Valentyn Silvestrov and Leonid Grabovsky, who is now a recognised masters in the USA and one of the founders of contemporary music in Ukraine.
Yuriy Sydoryak's work is dominated by a lyrical flow, which affects the themes and general structure of the music. It contains elements of expression, drama, monologism, and is done with musical polystylistic means. Professor Stefania Pavlyshyn is even more specific in her assessment of the composer: "In Reminiscences, he embodied lyrical, deeply meaningful reflections. In this work, all the instruments are continuously "singing".
- The lyrical stream of Yurii Sydoriak. The newspaper Halytska Zorya, 13 May 1997, Drohobych
In a similar style, he composed "Two reflections-romances on the words of the Polish poet Cyprian Norwood" for baritone and chamber orchestra. These are the reflections "Loneliness" and "Time", which in an atonal and declarative manner reveal the real state of the human soul, sadly telling the listener about the difficult state of mind of a lonely person. The work was written for a performer who is well acquainted with the manner of singing in the atonal sphere, where there is little reliance on tonal standard elements. The work was performed in Drohobych by Myroslav Freit, accompanied by the Myroslav Pucenteli Chamber Orchestra.
The Concerto for Trumpet and Symphony Orchestra in 3 movements stands out in his oeuvre, which is a classical ratio of parts with a slightly new presentation in terms of style to each other, but with a traditionally victorious and heroic finale, which is so characteristic of classical forms and especially when using such an instrument as the trumpet. The Three States (Letargia, Fluidity, Movement) for string orchestra were popular, written with extensive use of sonorous effects and a 12-step dodecaphonic system.
A large part of his work is composed of small musical forms, as well as song repertoire based on the words of L. Ukrainka, R. Bratun, M. Syngaevsky, M. Beley, and others. After graduating from the Lviv Conservatory in 1982, he was sent to the Drohobych Music and Drama Theatre named after Yurii Drohobych and to teach at the Drohobych Music School as a lecturer at the Theory Department.
During 1982-1997, Yurii Sydoriak taught composition and theoretical disciplines at the Barvinsky Higher Music College in Drohobych. He made a number of musical arrangements for performances, in which he also collaborated with the famous musical director of the Lviv Theatre of the Young Spectator, composer Bohdan Yanivskyi, and shared his experience in designing musical performances. At the music school, he brought up a young pleiad of theorists and musicologists, teaching polyphony, instrumentation, music analytical disciplines, music history and contemporary jazz. A teaching jazz orchestra, Dixieland, was created from among the college's faculty, which performed and conducted educational work in the city and in the region. In May 1997, Drohobych hosted a large recital as part of the festival "Strings of My Soul", featuring the composer's own works performed by artists and teachers from Drohobych, Stryi, and Lviv, with the entire programme conducted by musicologist Volodymyr Hrabovskyi. Some of these works from the programme were performed later by the London String Orchestra during the tour of the Miroslav Pucenteli Orchestra in the UK. In 1997, Yuriy Sydoryak went to the University of Illinois at Chicago (USA) for a long period of time for an internship under a programme on modern music publishing offered by the Ministry of Culture, where he studied modern computer music technologies with the aim of developing domestic music publishing.
While living in the United States for a long time, he kept in touch with the Ukrainian diaspora and avant-garde composer Leonid Grabovsky, and in contact with him continued to develop his own modern progressive work in the United States. While in Chicago for an internship at the University of Illinois, as well as in Northampton and Boston, Massachusetts, he became fascinated by the philosophical thoughts and views of Hryhorii Skovoroda and Nostradamus, and created his own collection of poetic katrenas with a view to the future fate of Ukraine and his own. He returned to Galicia to live in Ukraine in 2017. He lives in Drohobych. His creative literary pseudonym is Yurko Nototso.
Performers.
Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Lviv Philharmonic, conductor Yuriy Lutsiv, soloist Mykhailo Popovych (trumpet) Lviv, Symphony Orchestra of the Drohobych Music College named after V. Barvinsky, conducted by Stepan Kysylevych, Chamber Orchestra of Myroslav Putsenteli, Stryi, Iryney Turkanyk (violin), pianist Liudmyla Sadova, Drohobych, pianist Oles Korchynskyi, from Drohobych, Pianists Yurii Bon and Viacheslav Polianskyi, from Lviv, Hanna Frolyak-Havrylets from Kyiv, Soloist Myroslav Freit (baritone) Drohobych, Pedagogical University, Soloist Viktor Chernyshov (trumpet), choir "Legend" of the Igor. Cyklinsky from Drohobych, others...
Creative heritage
Musical manuscripts of Yurii Sydoriak's works
Chamber works by Yuriy Sydoryak
A short jazz dictionary. Yuriy Sydoryak
Yuriy Sydoryak Galicia - My Essence and Life
Volodymyr Symonenko Ukrainian Encyclopaedia of Jazz/Yuri Sydoryak/ p.99 http://kmf.karabits.com/pub/Jazz.pdf
