Vasyl Irkha

Vasyl Irkha was a Ukrainian choral conductor and pedagogue, born on 3 April 1947 in Shutnivtsi, Khmelnytskyi region, and died on 15 February 2013 in Kharkiv. A native of Podillia, he began his musical education at the Odessa Music School and graduated with distinction in 1970 from the Kharkiv State Institute of Culture, where he studied with Ye. Marykivskyi and V. Palkin.

Immediately after graduation, Irkha began his professional career as a teacher and conductor of the student choir at the Tulchyn Cultural and Educational College in Vinnytsia region. From 1972 to 1993 he served as choirmaster of the Merited Choral Capella “Druzhba” at the Palace of Culture of the Kharkiv Tractor Plant. From 1988 he also taught at the Kharkiv State Institute of Culture, and from 1993 he headed its Department of Choral Studies and Choral Conducting.

For almost twenty-two years he led the Oleksandr Maselskyi People’s Amateur Male Choral Capella of the Valky People’s House “Iskra.” Under his direction, the ensemble marked thirty-five years of creative activity in 2010. Its repertoire comprised more than 350 works, including national classics, arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs, and sacred music; it gave around 1,600 concerts and made numerous radio and television recordings.

From 1997 Irkha was artistic director and conductor of the institute’s student choir. With this ensemble he appeared on many prestigious stages, including the Palace of Culture “Ukraine” in Kyiv. In 2006, at the Column Hall of the M. V. Lysenko National Philharmonic of Ukraine, he led a premiere concert by the academic choir of the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture featuring contemporary Ukrainian neo-folkloric music and little-known foreign choral music of the 1980s and 1990s. He was noted as one of the first in Ukraine to present works by contemporary polystylist composers from Slovakia, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, the United States, and Spain.

Kharkiv audiences repeatedly encountered Irkha’s conducting at artistic events such as “Slobozhanski Peredzvony” and “Kharkiv – Mystetskyi.” He also prepared important concert programs devoted to reviving the classical national heritage, including performances with the symphony orchestra of the Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic. As a representative of Ukrainian choral art, he appeared not only in Ukraine but also in Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Estonia.

Alongside his performing work, Irkha was active as a scholar and teacher. He served on the scientific and methodological council of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine and on the academic council of the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, and he led the choral section of a regional seminar devoted to the analysis and study of new choral works. He published methodological and scholarly works on choral performance, vocal instruction in the choral class, the history of Ukrainian choral conducting, and the choral traditions of Valky district.

His distinctions included the title Merited Worker of Culture of Ukraine in 1983, Merited Artist of Ukraine in 1999, the academic rank of professor in 2003, and membership in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 2004. He received the Borys Hmyria Prize in 2005, the Oleksandr Maselskyi Prize in 2007, the Order of Merit, 3rd class, in 2009, and the honorary distinction “Slobozhanska Slava” of the Kharkiv Regional Council in 2010. He was also a laureate of the international festival “Varna Summer” in Bulgaria in 1983, a winner of an international choir competition in Marburg in 1986, a repeated winner of the regional competition “Higher School of Kharkiv Region – Best Names,” and an honorary citizen of the city of Valky.

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