Tetiana (Tanya) Khomenko has been playing balalaika for 22 years ever since her first music teacher, Oleksandr Vinnichenko from Kyiv music school #14, came to her classroom and asked “Who wants to play the balalaika?” Tetiana is a graduate of the Glière Kyiv Institute of Music, and earned a master’s degree at the P. Tchaikovsky National Music Academy, studying under the Honored Artist of Ukraine Professor Yuri Aleksyk. Her master’s thesis dealt with the problems of stress in music and ways to overcome it as a balalaika player.Tetiana studied conducting at the Institute, crediting instructors Valery Varakuta, Anatoly Dubina, Volodymyr Marunych, and Ihor Savkov with the knowledge that allowed her to conduct and perform world masterpieces. Ihor Savkov taught Tetiana orchestration, and she now plays in his orchestra at the Kyiv Music Institute. Tetiana’s favorite balalaika repertoire include Evgeny Trostyansky’s “Nocturne” and his “Grotesque and Pondering,” which she performed as a soloist in her first year at the academy.
Tetiana loves her quartet Bravo Band, which she calls the “Hipsters of Folk Music.” Performing music from the Renaissance to the present day, the group appears regularly at concerts and festivals, and in June 2013 won the International competition “Samorodki”