On April 4 – Kvitka Cisyk’s birthday – the Scientific and Technical Library, Lviv Polytechnic National University, held the evening in her memory.
Kvitka Cisyk is an American opera and blues singer of Ukrainian origin, a popular performer of jingles and Ukrainian songs that have become popular in the United States. Her voice was admired by the entire American show business. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and other world stars worked with her. However, in Ukraine, the voice of the outstanding singer was mostly heard after her death. Two Ukrainian-language records, which she released at her own expense, are still popular in America.
Distinguished guests came to the evening of remembrance. Among them, in particular, there were Roman Hrytsevych, founder and benefactor of the Kvitka Cisyk Museum, a member of the Lviv City Council, Marharyta Savchenko, coordinator of the Kvitka Cisyk Museum, as well as Khrystyna Lev and Marta Kachmar- the singer’s family.
In her speech, Nataliia Filevych, director of the Nahirny Foundation, dwell on the most important thing in the biography of Kvitka «Kasey» Cisyk. She was born in New York in a family of Ukrainian emigrants, quickly became a popular singer who performed jingles, blues, and also sang in opera. It was important that she sang at a time when everything we had on Ukrainian land was literally dying and being systematically destroyed. Her work came at a time when Soviet censorship was gaining momentum and destroying everything that could in one way or another reveal our identity.
Kvitka Tsysyk had a coloratura soprano and a very rare timbre, which specialists noticed more than once. From 1982 until her death, she was the only voice of the Ford Motors company, and once she almost won an Oscar, but due to a misunderstanding, she was not included in the official list.
Raised in the spirit of patriotism, she managed to record two Ukrainian-language albums during her lifetime: «Flower» (1980) and «Two Colors» (1989). It cost her about 200 thousand dollars. For their recording, the singer used her husband’s studio and invited the best musicians of New York. She sang in a white voice, which is a rather rare phenomenon and characteristic mainly of ethnic music. Kvitka dedicated her second disc to the impulses of the indomitable Ukrainian spirit and its endless endeavors on both sides of the ocean. Her songs were banned in the USSR. Kvitka Cisyk planned to release another disc, which should have included children’s and modern Ukrainian songs, but she did not due to an illness, which she could not overcome, even despite the efforts of her husband and the wealth of their family.
The photos are taken from the Facebook page of the Scientific and Technical Library of Lviv Polytechnic.
