Julian Kytasty

Julian Kytasty (Ukrainian: Юліян Китастий) is an American composer, singer, kobzar, bandurist, flute player and conductor of Ukrainian descent. He was born January 23, 1958 in Detroit, Michigan, in the family of refugees.

His first studies were in the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, in which his father, uncles and grandfather played in and conducted before him. He has been a resident of New York City since 1980. He moved there to found the New York Bandura Ensemble (which also at various times included minimalist composer-bandurist Michael Andrec, composer-lutenist Roman Turovsky-Savchuk, vocalists Gisburg and Natalia Honcharenko, and kobzar Jurij Fedynskyj), and began a career as a solo artist and bandura teacher that has taken him all over the world, from the Inuit lands to Patagonia. In 1989 he was invited to tour Ukraine, performing over a hundred concerts as a soloist as well as with a bandura ensemble.

Julian Kytasty holds a Masters degree in music (Composition, Theory and Voice) from Concordia University in Montreal (his undergraduate studies were in military history). He is the author of original compositions and arrangements that have entered the standard repertoire of bandurists around the world. He has been described as "the finest representative of the kobzar tradition in the Western Hemisphere".

He has also created and conducted avant-garde music for instrumental groups, choirs, and incidental music for dance and theatrical performances, notably for New York's Yara Arts Group. Julian is a frequent speaker on the bandura and its tradition.

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