Leonid Hrabovsky

LEONID HRABOVSKY (born 1935) – one of the leading representatives of Ukrainian musical modernism. He studied at the Kyiv Conservatory of Music with Levko Revutsky and Boris Latoshynsky. Significant in the composer’s creative development was his contact with Witold Lutoslawski, as well as his cooperation with the American composer and conductor Virko Baley.

He is the author of “Four Ukrainian Songs” for mixed choir and symphony orchestra (1959), four “Homeomorphies” (I, II, III for piano, 1968-69, IV for large symphony orchestra, 1970 ), melodrama “La Mer” for narrator, mixed chorus and large symphony orchestra to texts by Saint-John Perse (1964-1970), Symphony-Legende “Evening over Ivan Kupalo” (1976), symphonic poem “Vorzel” in memory of B. Lyatoshynsky (1992) – commissioned by the “Warsaw Autumn” Festival – and many other works. Using a wide range of modern compositional techniques developed in the 20th century, he created and from the late 1960s applied, constantly improving it, his own system and method of algorithmic composition. After many years of work, culminating in the computerization of this method, Hrabowski returned to active composition. In 2016 he wrote “12 Inventions for Two Voices” for harpsichord, in 2017 “Tetragon,” a symphony-caprice for guitar quartet and chamber orchestra, in 2018 “ARRY” for string orchestra, in 2019 “EQVIN” for violin and piano, and in 2020 STRO(r)GAN for organ. Hrabovsky is currently composing the opera “Dead Souls,” part of his grand opera pentalogy based on Gogol. The composer lived and worked in Moscow from 1981-90 in an effort to escape the repression that was reaching the intelligentsia in Ukraine at the time. Since 1990, he has lived and worked in New York.