Tereshko Parkhomenko

Terentiy (Tereshko) Makarovych Parkhomenko (1872–1910) was one of the most respected Ukrainian kobzars of the late 19th and early 20th century.

He was born 10 September 1872 in the village of Voloskivtsi, Sosnytsia county, in the Chernigov Governorate of the Russian Empire (modern Ukraine).

He had a tenor voice and a loud bandura and played songs with a patriotic content that were rarely performed by other kobzars.

And his energies did not fall on barren ground: after meeting some Ukrainian intellectuals, he asked that they show him some dumy, he purchased books and song books, and he has a literate guide boy specifically for the reason, that he have the potential to learn dumy and old songs.

The matter lies in the fact that his ability to play the bandura has undergone an evolution, and in my opinion Terentiy's manner of playing is very old..."The successful performance of the kobzars at the XIIth Archeological conference, showed a new direction in the development of kobzar art - the potential to perform this art on the stage.

Reminiscing the performance of the kobzars after the conference Khotkevych wrote: "the most visible career was made by T. Parkhomenko.

In the periodic press there are numerous mentions about his performances in Kremenchuk, Uman', Yekaterinoslav, Vinnytsia, Elizabethgrad, Mohyla-Podilsk and other towns.

The magazine "Ridniy krai" write about Parkhomenko's concert in 1908 that "it was a unique in its type: there performed blind kobzars without any intelligentsia influence.

(Apart from Parkhomenko the concert had performances by Ivan Kuchuhura Kucherenko, Mykhailo Kravchenko, Pavlo Hashchenko and Petro Drevchenko.)

The editor of the magazine "Ridniy krai" - Olena Pchilka - the mother of Lesia Ukrainka after hearing the performance of the kobzar at the Archeological conference in 1905 in Katerynoslav wrote:

"A similar article was published by Pchilka in a review of a concert by five kobzars in Kyiv on 21 October 1908 - Parkhomenko - she wrote - "He can give to a sad duma a happy accompaniment.