Vera Gerchik

Vera Gerchik was a Soviet composer, teacher, and choirmaster. She was a member of the Union of Soviet Composers and an Honored Artist. She was born on December 6, 1911, in Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine, into a family of doctors.

In 1937 she graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she studied composition with Nikolai Myaskovsky. From the same year she worked as the musical director of district radio in the Moscow Region and taught theoretical subjects and a children's creative class at the Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov Music College.

From 1944 she worked as an editor at Muzgiz, and later compiled music collections for the publishing house Prosveshchenie. Between 1945 and 1955 she was a theory teacher at a music school in Moscow's Timiryazevsky District. In 1949 and 1950 she also served as choirmaster of the children's choir at the Valery Chkalov House of Culture.

During the Great Patriotic War she performed in hospitals and worked with a patronized air defense unit. For this work she received the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War" in 1944. In 1985 she was named Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

Gerchik's works included the Variations on the theme "Caira" (1931), a Fugue (1931), a Poem (1933), Preludes (1935), 3 Pieces (1935), and 5 Pieces (1937). For orchestra she wrote a Symphony (1937), and for piano she composed three sonatas (1937, 1943, 1946). She also wrote the children's opera Forest Wonders (1967), the musical fairy tale How the Little Fox Was Taught a Lesson (1971), and songs and choruses for children.

She died in 1999 and was buried in Moscow at Kuzminskoye Cemetery. Her husband was the composer Vladimir Ivannikov.