Bohdan Vesolovskyi

Bohdan Vesolovsky ( 30 May 1915 – 17 December 1971) was a Ukrainian composer and songwriter.

Biography Bohdan Ostapovich Vesolovsky was born in Vienna. After World War I, his family moved to Stryi, then within in the Second Polish Republic. He studied at the Faculty of Law of Lviv University, where he graduated in 1937, and the Stryi branch of Mykola Lysenko Higher Music Institute. He graduated from the Consular Academy in Vienna in 1939.

During World War II, Vesolovsky served as an officer for the Austria-German border service. In 1949 he moved to Canada, where he worked as the editorin-chief of the Ukrainian version of Radio Canada International in Montreal.

Vesolovsky is known to have written more than 130 works. Songs of his first (Lviv) period are mainly of the tango, foxtrot, and light waltz variety. The lyrics of these songs was mostly about love. In the following years, his songs, such as 'Fly, sad song' and 'Charm of the Carpathian Mountains' were brighter-sounding. The Ukrainian singer Oleh Skrypka has recorded two albums based on songs discovered in Toronto—'My Heart is Vulnerable' (2009), and 'Dahlia' (2011).

Since 2015 an annual festival in memory of Vesolovsky has taken place in Ukraine.