Alexander Veprinsky  Artistic Director/Conductor

Alexander Veprinsky was born in Lviv (capital city of Western Ukraine) into a family of music lovers. For his early education he attended the Lviv Music School where he studied and played in the student folk instrument orchestra.

In 1975 Alexander enrolled in the Mykola Lysenko Lviv State Conservatory in the faculty of operatic-symphonic conducting. As an accomplished pianist, while still a student at the Conservatory, he worked as accompanist for the ballet of the Lviv Opera.

Upon his graduation from the Conservatory in 1980 Alexander worked as conductor of the Kharkiv Theatre of Operetta. From 1983 to 1986 he taught at the D. Sichinsky Music School in Ivano-Frankivsk and conducted its student symphony orchestra.

From 1986 until his arrival in Canada in 1993, Alexander was Principal Conductor and Director of Music at the M. Kropyvnytsky Music Theatre of Kirovohrad. He has been Artistic Director of the Shevchenko Musical Ensemble (both choir and orchestra) since 1996.

Alexander has composed music for a number of Ukrainian productions (and has been published), and has considerable experience in staging musical dramas and productions.

He is a very competent and prolific choral and orchestral arranger. Among his orchestrations for the Toronto Mandolin Orchestra are Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, the children‘s dance suite Thumbelina by Ukrainian composer Zhanna Kolodub, the Bizet-Shchedrin Carmen Suite, the outstanding arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and, most recently, the excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade Suite for solo domra and mandolin orchestra. In 2009 the Toronto Mandolin Orchestra premiered his arrangement in Glenn Gould Studio of Night on Bare Mountain from the opera Fair at Sorochinsk by Modest Mussorgsky which will be the basis of a major production in the near future. He has also orchestrated numerous operatic overtures and orchestral accompaniments to vocal and instrumental soloists.

For the 50th Anniversary of the Shevchenko Chorus, Alexander arranged, orchestrated and composed original bridges for a medley of 23 songs, old favourites of the Shevchenko Male Chorus. He has arranged numerous choral works for the mixed choir including the Christmas Suite by Ochterlony.

Alexander played a significant role in orchestrating a diverse repertoire for Mandolins of the World, a new initiative taken by the Toronto Mandolin Orchestra which featured various genres of mandolin music and performance.As conductor and accomplished musician, Alexander Veprinsky has done much to raise the performance level of both the choir and orchestra and has inspired the entire Shevchenko Musical Ensemble to greater artistic achievements.