Vasyl Yemetz

[3] His father was interested in Ukrainian ethnography and his family was one of the first to have a phonograph (1899) with which they recorded and collected folk songs.

[1][2] After completing his studies at Moscow University, he received a teaching position in 1917 in Sosnytsia, Chernihiv Oblast in Ukraine.

[citation needed] In 1918, he moved to Kyiv where he organized the first professional Bandurist Capella known as the Kobzar Choir.

[3] On the basis of the many bandura students, Yemetz established a second Bandurist Capella in Prague and also a number of smaller bandura ensembles in the Ukrainian Gymnasium, the Ukrainian Free University, the Drahomanov Pedagogical Institute in Prague and the Forestry Institute in Podebrady.

[4] In early 1929 he toured Carpathian regions in Czechoslovakia and Romania, before returning to France and setting off for North America.

He developed a new repertoire for the instrument and toured the United States in 1946 with classical transcriptions played on the new chromatic concert bandura.

[1] This is the first time that works such as Beethoven's "Moonlight sonata" and Tchaikovsky's "Arabian dance" were performed on the bandura.

[3] After 1956, he retired from performing and spent most of his time collecting materials and writing memoirs many of which remain unpublished.

[2] Much of his personal archives including music, photographs and concert programs were stored in a trunk he had left with a musicologist in Winnipeg.