Alexander Koshetz

At one time, a performance of Koshetz's Ukrainian National Chorus held the world record for audience attendance, excluding sporting events.

Koshetz was born in the village of Romashky in Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Obukhiv Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine).

[1] He also collected Ukrainian folk songs from central Ukrainian areas (notably around Kiev itself) as well as from the modern Russian area of Kuban, where he specially set out to see whether musical traditions of the Dnieper Cossacks are still present in their descendants, the Kuban Cossacks, who resettled there following the dissolution of the Zaporozhian Sich.

Koshetz also documented the choir's travels in the memoir With Song, Around the World (З піснею через світ).

In New York, he continued to popularize Ukrainian music with his compositions, arrangements, and gramophone recordings, and the music publishing house Witmark & Son published massive editions of forty-two Ukrainian folk songs arranged by Oleksandr Koshyts in English.

On his 130th birthday, a commemorative concert was held in Uspenskyi Cathedral of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra by the best graduates of the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy under patronage of President Yuschenko and under blessing of Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

[5] The personal archives of Alexander and Tetyana Koshetz remain at the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.