Arkady Filippenko

Arkady Dmitriyevich Filippenko () (8 January 1912 – 24 August 1983) was a Soviet Ukrainian composer. Biography He was born in the small village of Pushcha-Vodycia, now a suburb of Kyiv. As a pre-schooler, he spent a great deal of time outdoors with his grandfather, a shepherd who played and made pastoral pipes akin to those of the Swiss. The shepherd’s pipe was the first instrument he learned to play. In grammar school, he learned the guitar, mandolin and balalaika and played in the school orchestra. In 1926 at the age of 13, Filippenko began vocational school and completed a course in river transport. After graduation he began working at a shipbuilding factory. In his spare time, he played and directed amateur theatricals and came to the attention of the composer Ilya Vilensky who was director of a local music school. Vilensky invited Filippenko to attend the school, and it was there Filippenko learned to play the piano and studied music theory and composition, all while still working as a metal turner at the shipbuilding factory. As he progressed quickly, Vilensky sent him on to the Lysenko Music Institute, the most important music school in Ukraine and the forerunner of the Kyiv