Creative biography of Sherstiuk Tetyana - leader of the Ukrainian song choir "Veselka" of Balakliya Children's Music School, Balakliya town, Kharkiv region

    Tetyana Sherstiuk is a teacher-methodologist of Balakliya Children's Music School, a teacher with more than forty years of experience. Having a musicological education, which she received at Kharkiv B. Lyatoshynsky Music School and Kharkiv I. Kotlyarevsky Institute of Arts, Mrs Sherstiuk has for a long time worked as a teacher of solfeggio and concertmaster of the choir class. The love for polyphonic Ukrainian song, nurtured from the childhood by the family's singing roots, gave impetus to the creation of singing groups: first, in 1999, the folk group "Vesela Sloboda", and later, in 2010 - the choirs "Zoretsvit" and "Veselka". She considers the choice of repertoire to suit a certain level of training, developing children's harmonious hearing, the ability to listen to the whole choir and feel part of one harmonious singing body, as well as generally accepted laws of musical development to be the main rules of successful work with a student choir. The main thing for a conductor is to be able to feel the image-emotional sphere of the composition, love for music, which the director has to convey to young performers. Aforementioned is what the techniques of conducting should be subordinated to. The main purpose of Mrs Sherstiuk's work is to instill a sense of patriotism in the young generation, instilling love for Ukraine through love for Ukrainian song, the native people and its heritage.

Tetyana Sherstiuk's creative credo has given its results. Children gladly take part in the "Veselka" choir, which now has more than forty members. The choir is a multiple winner of various competitions and festivals from the regional to the international level; it is always welcomed to perform at all school and district cultural and artistic events. Honorary are the victories on the stages of the Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic, M. Lysenko KhNATOB, the big stage of Kharkiv I. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts.

       In addition to choral singing skills and other compulsory subjects, Mrs Sherstiuk’s students gain stage skills in theatrical performances, scripts for which are created by Mrs Sherstiuk herself, who is the founder, organizer and host of a number of school holidays. She is the founder of the annual Open Festival of Family Creativity "Our Great Lineage", which has been conducted since 2014. Veselka’s choristers participate in all national holiday events organized in the Balakliya region. They are the District Festival of Winter Ritual Folklore "Rejoice, Earth!", St. Nicholas Day, Shrovetide, Easter, Trinity, Ivan Kupala Day, Obzhynky.

For many years of fruitful work in the field of aesthetic education of the young generation Mrs Sherstiuk has repeatedly been awarded diplomas and letters of thanks by the Kharkiv Regional State Administration and Kharkiv Regional Council, Balakliya District State Administration and District Council, organizing committees of international and national competitions and festivals for providing high quality training to the participants, for holding masterclasses and presentations of own repertoire collections. She is the author of about two hundred adaptations of Ukrainian folk songs of various genres; there are also author songs based on her own texts and poems by Balakliya poets. She constantly covers the achievements of her students in the columns of the district press, on the district radio and regional television, on the Internet.

 E-mail: sloboda0306@ukr.net , super.spivak1996@ukr.net