Tatyana Verkina

Tatyana Borisovna Verkina was a Soviet and Ukrainian pianist, singer, pedagogue, and public figure. She was born on 18 September 1946 in Kharkiv and died on 4 July 2022 in Nuremberg. In 2004 she was awarded the title of People's Artist of Ukraine.

She was born into the family of the physicist Boris Yeremievich Verkin, later an academician, and Lydia Ivanovna Kovalenko, a teacher who taught chemistry at Kharkiv secondary school No. 53. In 1964 she graduated from the Kharkiv Secondary Specialized Music Boarding School, where she studied in the class of Noemi Goldinger. In 1969 she graduated from the Kharkiv Institute of Arts named after I. P. Kotlyarevsky in the class of V. D. Zakharchenko. In 1976 she completed an assistant internship at the Moscow Conservatory under the guidance of E. V. Malinin.

From 1969 onward, Verkina taught at the Kharkiv Institute, later University, of Arts named after I. P. Kotlyarevsky. She became an associate professor in 1988, a professor in 1997, and served as rector of the university from 2003 to 2020. In 2008 she became a Candidate of Art Studies with a dissertation titled “Actual Intoning as a Performance Problem.” From 2011 she was chair of the Council of Rectors of higher educational institutions of culture and arts of Ukraine.

Verkina was also an important organizer of musical life in Kharkiv. From 1991 she was the initiator and artistic director of the international music festival that from 1992 was held under the name “Kharkiv Assemblies.” She was a member of the Rotary Club of Kharkiv from 1994 and served as its president in 1996–1997. She also became a member of the All-Ukrainian National Music Union in 1995 and was a co-founder of the Foundation for the Support of Young Talents in 1994 and of the Schubert Society in Kharkiv in 1996.

Her distinctions included Honored Artist of Ukraine in 1994, the I. I. Slatin Municipal Prize in 2001, the honorary badge “Slobozhanska Slava” in 2001, the Order of Merit, III class, in 2011, the title of Honorary Citizen of Kharkiv in 2012, the Silver Medal of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine in 2013, the Order of Merit, II class, in 2017, and the Gloria Artis medal for Merit to Culture of Poland in 2020.