by Warren M. Sherk
Kremenchuk wind band
Kremenchuk, Ukraine, the city of Dimitri Tiomkin’s birth, honored the composer with “Tiomkin Days-2010 – The Days of European Culture in Kremenchuk.” A municipal wind band performed music by Tiomkin and a video greeting sent from London by Olivia Tiomkin Douglas was presented. A packed house heard the “Ballad of the Alamo” from the “Overture” to the film, the march from Circus World, and the theme from “Rawhide,” which received a standing ovation. The band music was prepared for the Kremenchuk ensemble by orchestrator Patrick Russ in Los Angeles. The event merited news coverage on a local television station that including an interview with event producer Iryna Kats and images of Dimitri Tiomkin.
The purpose of “Tiomkin Days-2010” is to increase awareness among Kremenchuk residents about the contribution of the composer to European and world culture and to promote the city’s historic affiliation with the same. The ambitious program includes a bilingual Web site (www.tiomkin.info) in Ukrainian and English, outreach to local schools to inform students of Tiomkin’s life story, and research in regional archives to document the Tiomkin family history in Kremenchuk. In September, the 440th anniversary of the city will be celebrated.
Kats and other advocates for Tiomkin are working to place a memorial stone on Radyans’ka Street, one of the main streets in Kremenchuk, where Tiomkin’s family lived in 1904. On November 16, 2010, during a round table devoted to the subject of Dimitri Tiomkin hosted by the Kremenchuk regional natural history museum participants adopted a resolution proposing to install a plaque for Tiomkin in Kremenchuk. Kats and other researchers have learned from information in the Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kirovogradskoi oblasti [State Archive of Kirovohrad Oblast] that in 1900 the Tiomkin family lived in the Lipavsky house on Khersonska Street, now known as Karl Marx Street. By 1904 the family was living downtown in the Paryzky house on Doktorska Street, presently Radyans’ka Street. Since the exact location of the Tiomkin family home has not been determined and it is not clear if the house survives, the best place to position the plaque is still being discussed. Once approved and funded, the memorial stone will be installed, possibly at the intersection of Radyans’ka and Butyrina Streets.
The Kremenchuk Community Development Foundation, a non-governmental organization, planned the event which received funding from the European program of the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF). The IRF is dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions necessary for an open society in Ukraine. It is part of the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, an American investor and philanthropist born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930.
Thanks to Iryna Kats for supplying information for this article, for organizing the program, and for her unstinting advocacy of Tiomkin in Kremenchuk and Ukraine.
Tiomkin Days in Kremenchuk (For Tiomkin Days see from 7:30 to 11:15.)
In a related note, earlier this year Tiomkin’s music was featured in “Tales from Ukraine” in Edmonton, Canada. In January, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Ukrainian Male Chorus of Edmonton performed the “Theme from High Noon” and “Rawhide.” The sold-out concert at the Francis Winspear Centre for Music was led by conductor Lucas Waldin.
Sources
- International Renaissance Foundation
- “Kremenchuk community proposes to install a memorial stone in honor of outstanding countryman Dmytro Tiomkin”
- Belseck, Daria, “TALES FROM UKRAINE – The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra,” January 17, 2011