The Veriovka Choir explained what the group's former director is doing now

Zinoviy Korinets, former general director and artistic director of the Hryhoriy Veryovka National Honored Academic Ukrainian Folk Choir, has focused on teaching since leaving the ensemble. The choir is currently led by Ihor Kuryliv, who took over after Korinets’ departure. According to him, the former director continues to pass on his experience to the younger generation and remains involved in the arts.

Korinets currently works at the Mykhailo Dragomanov National Pedagogical University. “He teaches at the Mykhailo Dragomanov University, at the Anatoliy Avdievsky Faculty of Arts,” said Kuryliv.

The choir director explained that after his contract expired in 2021, Korinets decided to compete for a new term in the position. However, the victory went to Oleksandr Tarasenko, the choirmaster of the National Opera of Ukraine.

According to Kuryliv, the choir did not agree with this decision and began protesting.

“A riot broke out; the choir gathered outside the Ministry of Culture, stood there for half an hour, but no one came out and there was no result. Then the choir turned around and went to the Office of the President. Everything was resolved there in 10 minutes: Tarasenko himself resigned from his position, but Korinets didn’t gain anything at all, because he had already been fired. So I was appointed acting director,” he said.

Kurilov claims that after his appointment, he allowed Korinets to continue working in the choir. However, disagreements later arose between them.

“I’m not going to leave a man (Zinoviy Korinets) out on the street who once hired me after Avdievsky’s death. I’m hiring Korinets. I get a call from the ministry and they say: ‘What have you done? Well, now you deal with him yourself; we’re not interested in anything else.’ And Zinoviy took it all this way: ‘Why did they appoint you as acting director instead of him?’ I said, ‘Go ask them why they appointed me. I don’t know, I didn’t ask for it,’ the choir director noted.

“And that’s when the friction between Zinoviy and me began. It ended with me firing him. He was offended, of course. But firing Zinoviy gave me the opportunity to steer the choir in a different direction, because it had already started to slip a bit by then,” he said.

Former Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko systematically sought to replace Zinoviy Korinets with Oleksandr Tarasenko. That is why, during the competition, voters from the ministry cast their votes for the National Opera’s choirmaster. By law, the Ministry of Culture was required to appoint Tarasenko, the winner of the competition, as the choir’s general director, but following a revolt by the ensemble, Minister Tkachenko persuaded the National Opera’s choirmaster to write a letter himself requesting that he not be appointed. At the same time, keeping Korinets as the choir’s director would have meant “admitting defeat” for the Ministry of Culture. And so it happened that Ihor Kuryliv became the acting general director of the choir.