MELNIK Ion

Ion S. Melnik (1935–2018) was born in Moscow. During his career he composed many songs, instrumental and choral music, music for movies, etc. His musical journey began at an early age, when he joined the nation’s leading children’s ensemble sponsored by the USSR Ministry of Railroads. He quickly became the concertmaster of the ensemble, where he played the domra, soon becoming one of the best domra players in the USSR, being the second person to perform N. P. Budashkin’s concert for the domra and the orchestra. His talent attracted the attention of a legendary Soviet composer, Isaak Dunayevsky (brother of the ensemble’s director and founder). At the age of 14, following Isaak Dunayevsky’s recommendation, Ion Melnik joined the Seminar of Young Composers of the USSR (ran by the Union of Composers of the USSR).

Ion Melnik continued his musical education at the Moscow College of Music affiliated with the P.I. Tchaikovsky’s Moscow State Conservatory and later at the N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s St. Petersburg (Leningrad) State Conservatory. His teachers included Igor Belorusets, Grigory Frid, Julian Krein, and Sergei Slonimski.

During his military service, he was the concertmaster of the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Northern Fleet, where he composed a number of songs that entered into the ensemble’s permanent repertoire. Later in his career, he founded a number of orchestras, including a military ensemble of the Moscow region (the Moscow Region’s Air Defense Forces’ Ensemble). He spent nearly three decades as the music director for the Theater of Front Novels, founded by Admiral G. N. Holostyakov. This theater was dedicated to the memory of WWII victims and was comprised of veterans of the nation’s leading military ensemble, the A. V. Alexandrov Academic Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army.

Ion Melnik’s choral music has won international competitions and has been a part of educational curriculum for chorus conductors since the 1970’s.

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