Nikolai Dremlyuga was a Soviet and Ukrainian composer and music teacher. He was born on July 15, 1917, in Buturlinovka, in a family of teachers; his father taught mathematics and his mother taught literature. He became fluent in French and German, studied piano with H. Beklemishev, and performed works by Sergei Rachmaninoff while studying at the Kyiv Industrial Institute, which he graduated from in 1939.
In 1946, Dremlyuga graduated from the Pyotr Tchaikovsky Kyiv State Conservatory, where he studied composition with Lev Revutsky and completed studies in history and theory. He joined the Union of Composers of Ukraine in 1944 and completed postgraduate study in 1949. From 1946 he taught in the conservatory’s history and theory and composition departments, becoming an associate professor in 1965 and a professor in 1978.
Dremlyuga wrote the first concerto for bandura and published musicological work on Ukrainian piano music and folk-song arrangement. His honors included the title of Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR in 1972, People's Artist of Ukraine in 1993, and the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine in 1998 for his Third Symphony.
He died on December 18, 1998, and was buried at Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv.