Traditional Ukrainian Minstrel Performance

Biographies

Taras Kompanichenko is one of Ukraine’s most well-versed and influential performers in the tradition of the itinerant bards, known as kobzari. He researches and performs the full kobzar repertoire of epic songs, historical ballads, ritual songs, as well as religious psalms and chants that date from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Taras has studied Ukraine's music history, focusing on the traditions of the early church, post-renaissance culture, including the Cossack Baroque, as well as Romanticism and the early twentieth-century. He performs on the Veresai twelve string kobza (a traditional Ukrainian stringed instrument of the lute family), as well as the hurdy-gurdy and Cossack lute. Taras also regularly conducts soirees devoted to Ukrainian and European court and folk dances.

Jurij Fedynskyj is an American-born performer of the kobzar repertoire. For the past eight years he has lived in Kyiv, Ukraine, studying the traditions of the kobzari. Jurij performs on the kobzar bandura (a Ukrainian plucked string instrument), Veresai kobza, drum, and bassola. In Ukraine he has spearheaded the creation of ethno-music projects such as the group "Karpatyans," who study the music of the Carpathian mountain region, and the early music ensemble "Khoreya kozats’ka". Jurij also documents museum collections of Ukrainian folk and elite instruments and makes reconstructions of these instruments.

Both Taras and Jurij regularly perform together throughout Ukraine.

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