Item UF2016.021.g004 - Partysanska / Ruta

Composer, conductor and music critic Mykola Fomenko (b. 1894, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, d. 1961, New York, USA) was raised in a large family by a widowed father, who encouraged his son to pursue a “practical” profession. Fomenko began studying piano only at age 17. During the First World War he fought in the Caucasus. In 1929 he graduated from the Kharkiv Conservatory, where he studied composition and conducting. He was music director and conductor of the Kharkiv Music and Drama Theatre, until he was dismissed for refusing the join the Communist Party. Subsequently he worked at the Mystetstvo publishing house. Following the Second World War he was a displaced person in Europe until he immigrated to the United States in 1951. There he taught at the Ukrainian Music Institute of America in New York and worked for the Ukrainian section of Voice of America.

His output as a composer consists of more than 100 works, including two symphonies, a piano concerto, chamber works for strings, solo piano pieces, several operas, incidental music, choral works and art songs.