Grigory Verevka
Grigory Verevka was a Soviet Ukrainian composer and choral conductor. He was born on 13 (25) December 1895 in Berezna, then a village in Chernihiv Governorate.
He graduated from Chernihiv Theological Seminary in 1916. From 1918 to 1921 he studied at the Lysenko Kyiv Music and Drama Institute with A. K. Butsky, worked there from 1923 to 1927, and completed his studies externally in 1933. From 1919 he led amateur music groups and taught choral conducting at music schools in Kyiv. He taught at the Tchaikovsky Kyiv Conservatory from 1931 and became a professor in 1947.
From 1941 to 1945, Verevka was a researcher at the Institute of Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. He organized the Ukrainian State Folk Choir in 1943 and served as its artistic director and chief conductor until his death. From 1943 to 1952 he chaired the Union of Composers of the Ukrainian SSR.
Verevka arranged folk songs and wrote songs including “Oh, How Green It Has Become,” “Oh, Why, Earth, Have You Begun to Grow Young?” and “And It Rustles, and It Hums.” He was named People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1960 and received the Stalin Prize, First Class, in 1948 for his concert performance work. He received the Ukrainian SSR State Shevchenko Prize posthumously in 1968 for the choir's concert programs.
He died on 21 October 1964 and was buried at Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv.