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25 YEARS: Classical Music Daily celebrates twenty-five years of daily publication with an hour-long video featuring some of our regular contributors.
LISTENING TO TCHAIKOVSKY: Béla Hartmann uses his knowledge of Eastern Europe to argue against the banning of all Russian culture following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
American conductor, pastor and teacher Roger McMurrin was born in Bedford, Indiana on 7 August 1939 and moved when young to Xenia, Ohio. He studied music at Olivet Nazarene University and at Ohio State University.
He began his career as a teacher at Xenia High School. He was director of music at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and then at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Texas, then at First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Florida.
In 1991 he conducted Handel's Messiah in Kyiv, and became aware that the Ukrainians had not heard it before - it had been banned by the Soviet Union, and his performances were the first in Ukraine for seventy years. Two years later he moved to Ukraine and taught English and music theory there. He set up the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Chorus - Ukraine's first private orchestra. Later he established and ran the Church of the Holy Trinity, and later he and his wife founded the Christian relief organisation Music Mission Kyiv.
Roger McMurrin died in Lebanon, Ohio on 13 December 2023, aged eighty-four.