Yury Shcherbinin
Yury Shcherbinin was a Soviet and Ukrainian musicologist, music critic, teacher, photographic artist, and public figure. He was born on May 30, 1941, in Kharkiv, and died there on November 17, 2019. He was the founder and head of the public open-access museum "Guardians of Musical Kharkiv Region."
In 1964 he graduated from the Kharkiv Music College, specializing in piano in the class of Ya. Feigin. From 1965 to 1967 he studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory in the classes of Professor P. Serebryakov and Professor E. Murina. In 1970 he graduated from the Kharkiv Institute of Arts named after I. Kotlyarevsky, in the class of Professor G. Tyumeneva.
From 1964 he taught at the Beethoven Children's Music School in Kharkiv. In 1964-1967 he was a répétiteur and teacher at the B. Lyatoshinsky Kharkiv Music College. From 1967 to 1973 he taught at the Kharkiv Institute of Arts and headed its cabinet of music history and theory. He served as executive secretary of the Kharkiv organization of the Union of Composers of Ukraine in 1973-1978 and 1984-1997, and from 1978 to 1984 he was director of the B. Lyatoshinsky Kharkiv Music College.
Later in his career, from 2000 to 2003, Shcherbinin worked as a photographic artist at the KONIKA photo salon in Kharkiv. In 1997-2000 and again from 2003 onward, he taught in the philosophy department at Ivan Kozhedub Kharkiv Air Force University and also worked there as a photographic artist, curator for culture and the arts, and instructor in the department for work with personnel. From 1973 he was a member of the Union of Composers of Ukraine and the All-Ukrainian Music Union, and he was repeatedly elected to the board of the Union of Composers of Ukraine. In 2015 he became a member of the auditing commission of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine.
Over many decades, his work was devoted to the revival and preservation of the history of the musical culture of Slobozhanshchyna and to the promotion of the best achievements of contemporary Ukrainian music. As early as the late 1960s, he produced important research, publications, and media appearances aimed at restoring the memory of I. I. Slatin, regarded in the article as the founder of professional music in Kharkiv, and of Slatin's artistic circle.
Drawing on his personal archival collections, which included rare materials connected with I. Slatin, Yakiv Stepovy, Fyodor Akimenko, V. Horovets, Sviatoslav Richter, Dmitri Shostakovich, Pavel Serebryakov, and other cultural figures of Ukraine and Russia, he prepared and presented radio and television series such as "Journey into the Past," "Music and Modernity," "Music Born in Our City," and "To Be or Not to Be a Music Museum in Kharkiv." He was the author of more than 200 publications in collected volumes and periodicals and contributed articles on the history of musical education in Kharkiv, Kharkiv's musical life, the origins of the city's musical culture, and other historical topics.
Shcherbinin also took part in international conferences, including those devoted to Ukrainian music of the 16th-18th centuries in Kyiv and to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven in Minsk. He regularly gave public lectures and talks devoted to musical education and enlightenment. He was also the author and chief editor of the musical design for the Memorial of Eternal Glory in Kharkiv.
In 2013 he received the municipal Ilya Slatin Prize. On August 30, 2014, with support from the Kharkiv city authorities and the leadership of Kharkiv Air Force University, a permanent public Gallery-Museum, "Guardians of Musical Kharkiv Region," was opened on his initiative and on the basis of his personal archival collection, and he became its head.