The concert will feature songs written by Olexander Koshetz or otherwise related to him and his work as a conductor.
Alexander Koshetz (12 September 1875 – 21 September 1944) was a Ukrainian choral conductor, arranger, composer, ethnographer, writer, musicologist, and lecturer. He helped popularize Ukrainian music around the world. His name is sometimes transliterated as Oleksandr Koshyts (Ukrainian: Олександр Кошиць). After World War I, Koshetz was the co-founder and conductor of the Ukrainian Republic Capella (later renamed Ukrainian National Chorus). The choir toured Europe and the Americas in 1919–1924 and 1926–27, in support of the international Ukrainian community.
At one time, a performance of Koshetz's Ukrainian National Chorus held the world record for audience attendance, excluding sporting events. In 1917 Koshetz married a former student and singer in his choirs Tetyana Koshetz (1892–1966) who was later to become a vocalist in the Ukrainian National Chorus, voice teacher, and after 1944 curator of the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre in Winnipeg. It was Koshetz who introduced the song "Shchedryk" by Mykola Leontovych, at a concert in Kiev in 1919. Eventually the song became a Christmas classic under the name "Carol of the Bells". He moved to New York City in 1922 where he collected liturgical music, arranged and popularized Ukrainian folk music. Koshetz also documented the choir's travels in the memoir With Song, Around the World (З піснею через світ).
In 1926, he settled in New York and worked in the United States and Canada to educate new conductors: he conducted music courses for conductors, etc. He composed church music (5 liturgies, some chants), and arranged folk songs. In New York, he continued to popularize Ukrainian music with his compositions, arrangements, and gramophone recordings, and the music publishing house Witmark & Son published massive editions of forty-two Ukrainian folk songs arranged by Oleksandr Koshyts in English. From 1941 Koshetz spent the summer months teaching in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he died in 1944 at age 69.