Serhiy Yarunsky (Stepaniuk Serhiy Anatoliyovych), (16 January 1970, c. Yarun, Novohrad-Volyn district, Zhytomyr region, Ukrainian SSR) - Ukrainian composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist, philosopher, member of the International Guild of Musicians, National Union of Composers of Ukraine in 1997-1998 and since 2008, National League of Ukrainian Composers since 1998, Association of Variety Artists of Ukraine from 1999 to 2003, laureate of the international competition for young composers "Biennial of Contemporary Arts of Ukraine" (2004), Kyiv), the All-Ukrainian Festival of Contemporary Ukrainian Song.
In his childhood, he was a musical prodigy, had a keen ear, excellent musical memory and a remarkable talent for improvisation. At the age of 9, he began recording music that he had only memorised since the age of 5, and his favourite thing to do was to "extract sounds from everything in his hands" and play the music he had just heard. He taught himself to play the drum kit, harmonica and accordion. His first music teacher was his father Anatolii, who in his younger years was the leader of an amateur brass band, composer of foxtrots and marches (the sheet music has not been preserved because the club where they played burned down).
In 1984, he graduated with honours from the Novohrad-Volyn Music School, majoring in accordion (teacher Karpliuk A. V.).
In 1989, he graduated from the Zhytomyr Music School, majoring in accordion (teacher - L. Savytskyi) and composition (optional course with the composer O. Stetsiuk).
From 1989 to 1991, he studied at the Rivne Institute of Culture (conducting class of People's Artist of Ukraine Bohdan Depo).
In 1989 and 1990, he twice travelled to the Moscow Conservatory for consultations on composition in the class of Mykola Sidelnikov and Albert Lehmann.
In 1995, he graduated from the Kyiv State Conservatory (Faculty of Composition, class of Professors M. Dremliuga and Y. Lapynskyi).
In 1993-1997, he was a member of the composer's association "VSSG" (Victoria Polyova, Sviatoslav Lunev, Serhiy Yarunsky, Hryhoriy Nemyrovsky).
Since 1997, he has been signing his name under the pseudonym Serhii Yarunskyi, which comes from the name of his native village of Yarun.
Creativity.
The most radical representative of Ukrainian musical actionism of the late XX - early XXI centuries (along with Serhiy Zazhytko, Volodymyr Runchak, Carmela Tseppolenko, Liudmyla Yurina, Ivan Nebesnyi, Danylo Pertsov, and Hryhoriy Nemyrovskyi).
He is the author of extraordinary, bizarre works that have created scandalous fame for the composer. Among them:
instrumental trilogy - Mystery Buff No. 1: "Abomination" (uses a non-standard technique of "singing on the breath"), "Abomination" and "Abomination" (for this work he was expelled from the Union of Composers of Ukraine, the union members had no comments on the music itself, but the performance was perceived as an insult to the feelings of believers) - 1996
"Striptease Requiem" (1998, 2004) (the premiere of the work was threatened because the Minister of Culture personally insisted that it not be performed)
"Cactus Greenhouse" - Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1992, 1994) (during the premiere performance, N. Gerasimova-Persydska demonstratively left the hall and loudly closed the door)
"Koshchuna" - Symphony No. 4 for piano, (1995) (the magazine "ART LINE" published a rather angry article by Y. Chekan about the concert, where this work was mentioned),
"Cybalion - Symphony-Transmutation for Symphony Orchestra and Organ (1995) (the premiere of the work caused a scandal during the state examination in the speciality)
Mystery-buff No. 2, "Viy" (2009) (conductors Vitaliy Protasov and Mykola Lysenko refused to conduct this work, as a result, in 2011 the author conducted the premiere of the work himself)
"Ataviza - a futuristic quartet (2015), etc.
The premieres of the above-mentioned works led to a stir around the name of their author.
Yarunsky's oeuvre includes more than 200 works. In particular, more than 50 pieces of symphonic and chamber-instrumental music, the vast majority of which are experimental in nature. He is the author of more than 100 songs (including those for children). The song "Fog, fog over the valley" (words by Taras Shevchenko) is already considered a folk song. Music for ballet performances (collaboration with Honoured Artists of Ukraine: Valery Magitov, Anatoly Burdein, Mikhail Motkov, choreographer Natalia Yakovtsova, grand performer Olga Kebas), music for the film "I" (Romance), based on the novel by Mykola Khvylovy. He is the author of more than 100 poems, philosophical essays (cosmological and anarchist) "Improvisations of an Anarchist" and "The Wisdom of the Devil".
His works have been performed in Germany, Italy, Denmark, the USA, France, Canada, Poland, Great Britain, Turkey, Bosnia, Russia, at international and national festivals: International Forum of Young Music, Premiere of the Season, Kyiv Music Fest, Zhytomyr Music Spring, and contemporary art festivals: "Meta-Art" (1997, Kyiv), "Cultural Heroes" (2002, Kyiv), "Sunny Clarinets" (2003, Korosten), and all-Ukrainian song festivals: "Boromlya" (1999), "Song Vernissage" (2000, 2017), "Song Premiere" (2018), "Nightingale Ukraine" (2017), "ChubynskyFEST", "ZirkaFest", "Sunflower" (2014-...), radio festivals: "Song of the Year" (1999-2003), "Through the Pages of Ukrainian Variety", "LiMuzIn" with Viktor Ovsiienko (1999-2003), etc...
His philosophical views evolved from the ideas of panentheism, panpsychism, and cosmism to a combination of instrumentalism, anarchism, and hylosoism, to the rejection of the "principle of finitude" (and thus of the beginning) as a consequence of "textual, literary" thinking. In his philosophical method, he applies the principles of synergetics and chaos theory. In the early 1990s, Yarunsky called his direction "cosmic polyphony". He was greatly impressed by his acquaintance with the philosophy of the brilliant German thinker of the eighteenth century Johann Hamann and the Irish philosopher George Berkeley. An exceptional impression was made by reading the works of the unique German thinker Max Stirner and the French writer and thinker Marquis de Sade. Since then, he has fundamentally refused to build his own philosophical system and destroyed his youthful treatise "The Beginnings of Philosophy". He studied the philosophy of Eastern thinkers, in particular, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo.
He is one of the most prominent contemporary critics of the church and religion as institutions that manipulate the mass consciousness. For a long time, he studied the works of critics and creators of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. He paid special attention to apophatic theology, studied folklore, pagan customs and rituals of different peoples of the world. He argues that God is an instrumental concept, a "marker" of culture. Some of the newest Christian churches in Kyiv have declared him anathema.
He is a freelance artist. For many years, he has been working in various creative teams and institutions in Kyiv, including the Kyiv Municipal Academy of Circus and Variety Arts named after L. Utesov, the Kyiv Municipal Ukrainian Dance Academy named after Serge Lifar, the STB TV channel (3-D Show "Baron Munchausen", in the TV show "Everybody's Dancing" - 1, 2, 3, 4), the Kyiv Choreographic College, etc.
Family
His wife Olha Yarynovska is a singer (mezzo-soprano), vocal teacher, songwriter, sound engineer, founder and artistic director of the Exemplary Vocal Ensemble "Necklace". Great-great-granddaughter of the Polish nobleman Ivan Jarynowski, a participant in the January Uprising (1863).
Son Ihor Stepaniuk is a student at the Technical University (Kosice, Slovakia).
Great-uncle Volodymyr Kot - actor of the first cast of the Kyiv Youth Theatre.
Second cousin Oleksandr Balyuk - Hero of Ukraine, Hero of the Heavenly Hundred.
