Roman Mykhailovych Turovsky-Savchuk (born May 16, 1961) is an American artist-painter, photographer and videoinstallation artist, as well as a lutenist-composer,Suhayl Saadi Uncensored « Kitaab
Kitaabonline.wordpress.com. Retrieved on 18 October 2011. born in Ukraine. His musical works were published under various

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

s, including Johann Joachim Sautscheck.

Biography

Turovsky was born in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

in 1961, when it was part of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. He studied art from an early age under his father, the painter Mikhail Turovsky and at the Shevchenko State Art School in Kyiv. He also began to be interested in music in his teens. The family emigrated to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in 1979. They first lived in the

Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

. Turovsky continued his art studies in New York at the

Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

, studying concurrently Historical Performance (Baroque

Lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...

) and Composition, under Patrick O'Brien, Pier Luigi Cimma, Leonid Hrabovsky and Davide Zannoni.

Art

Turovsky began composing in the early 1990s, simultaneously embarking on a career as a prolific artist-painter. He participated in many exhibitions. His first one-man show was held in June 2006 in New York, and the second in February 2013. Eight of his paintings are in the permanent collection of the International Marian Institute at the

University of Dayton The University of Dayton (UD) is a Private university, private, Catholic research university in Dayton, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1850 by the Society of Mary (Marianists), Society of Mary, it is one of three Marianist universities in the U ...

Cinema and television

Turovsky worked as a scenic artist in the production of

Jim Jarmusch James Robert Jarmusch ( ; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director, screenwriter and musician. He has been a major proponent of independent film, independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as ''Stranger Than Paradise'' ...

's film " Ghost Dog",

Paul Schrader Paul Joseph Schrader (; born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He first became known for writing the screenplay of Martin Scorsese's ''Taxi Driver'' (1976). He later continued his collaboration with Scor ...

's " First Reformed",

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...

's '' Blackstar'' as well as in Tom DiCillo's " Double Whammy", Law & Order: Organized Crime and other films. He is a member of United Scenic Artists.

Music

As a composer, Turovsky concentrated on the instrumental idiom of the

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...

and the

torban The torban (, also ''teorban'' or ''Ukrainian theorbo'') is a Ukrainian musical instrument that combines the features of the Baroque lute with those of the psaltery. The Тorban differs from the more common European bass lute known as the theo ...

, as well as

viola da gamba The viola da gamba (), or viol, or informally gamba, is a bowed and fretted string instrument that is played (i.e. "on the leg"). It is distinct from the later violin family, violin, or ; and it is any one of the earlier viol family of bow (m ...

and

carillon A carillon ( , ) is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a musical keyboard, keyboard and consists of at least 23 bells. The bells are Bellfounding, cast in Bell metal, bronze, hung in fixed suspension, and Musical tuning, tu ...

. He composed over 1100 instrumental and vocal works influenced by his Ukrainian heritage and the baroque. Many of these were premiered by Luca Pianca at several international festivals (

Salamanca Salamanca () is a Municipality of Spain, municipality and city in Spain, capital of the Province of Salamanca, province of the same name, located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is located in the Campo Charro comarca, in the ...

, Lisbon, Schwetzingen,

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; or , archaically ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, where it straddles the Bacchiglione, River Bacchiglione. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and e ...

Urbino Urbino ( , ; Romagnol: ''Urbìn'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Italy, Italian region of Marche, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially und ...

Metz Metz ( , , , then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle (river), Moselle and the Seille (Moselle), Seille rivers. Metz is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Moselle (department), Moselle Departments ...

and Paris), Roland Ferrandi in Corte, Simon Paulus at

Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel (; ) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District Wolfenbüttel (; ) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel (district), Wolfenbüttel Distri ...

and Jindřich Macek in

Přibyslav Přibyslav () is a town in Havlíčkův Brod District in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 4,100 people. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected as an urban monument zone. Administrative division Př ...

, Kraty,

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

and

Hvar Hvar (; Chakavian: ''Hvor'' or ''For''; ; ; ) is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, located off the Dalmatian coast, lying between the islands of Brač, Vis (island), Vis and Korčula. Approximately long, with a high east–west ridge of M ...

. He also collaborated with Paulo Galvão and Hans Kockelmans in a series of experimental works which they jointly composed. His works have been performed/recorded by Robert Barto, Robert MacKillop, Oleg Timofeyev, Massimo Marchese, John Schneiderman, Thomas Schall, Trond Bengtson, Terrell Stone,

Christopher Wilke Christopher Wilke (born 1973) is an American composer, lutenist, guitarist, recording artist, and teacher. Biography Born in Cincinnati, Wilke studied guitar and composition at the College of Mount St. Joseph, and took his master's degree in ...

and Bernhard Hofstötter on lute, Angelo Barricelli and Fernando Lewis de Mattos on guitar, Ernst Stolz on

, as well as Hans Kockelmans and Olesya Rostovskaya on

. In 2011 and 2013 Turovsky was profiled in two 1 hour-long programs on the Dutch Classical radio-station

Concertzender The Dutch public broadcasting system () is a group of organizations that are responsible for public service television and radio broadcasting in the Netherlands. It is composed of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (organisation), Nederlandse Publiek ...

. He also composed over 40

tombeau A tombeau (plural tombeaux) is a musical composition (earlier, in the early 16th century, a poem) commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date f ...

x dedicated to various cultural figures. These were described by Pablo del Pozo as being of "unquestionable musical quality". As a performer, Turovsky-Savchuk appeared as a

soloist and continuo player in the

Early Music Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750) or Ancient music (before 500 AD). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad Dates of classical ...

line-up of Julian Kytasty's " New York Bandura Ensemble" and "Radio Banduristan". Roman Turovsky was a recipient of the 2008 NYSCA grant for the purpose of study of

kobzar A ''kobzar'' ( ; ) was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment, played on a multistringed kobza or bandura. Tradition The professional kobzar tradition was established during the Hetmanate Era around the sixteenth cen ...

art with Julian Kytasty. Roman Turovsky-Savchuk is a founding member of Vox Saeculorum and The Delian Society, two international groups devoted to the preservation and perpetuation of

tonal music Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and / or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived ''relations'', ''stabilities'', ''attractions'', and ''directionality''. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or the root of a triad with t ...

. He was described as composer-extraordinaire by the British author Suhayl Saadi. Turovsky-Savchuk contributed to the soundtracks of the

documentaries A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". The American author and media analyst Bill ...

" A Rising Fury" (2022) and " She Paid The Ultimate Price" (2011), and in 2013 to the Marko Robert Stech's Georgy Narbut episode in the KontaktTV Toronto ( OMNI TV (Canada)) series "Eyes on Culture" No.55.

Discography

* Stuart Walsh - "Impiae Stellae" (Polyhymnion CD005, USA 2025) * Alberto Crugnola - "Am I Dreaming" - (Novantica Records, Italy 2024) * Scott Saari - "Fantasma Pacis" (Polyhymnion CD004, USA 2023) * Volodymyr Voyt - "Pulchritudo In Tempore Belli" (Polyhymnion CD003, USA 2023) * Massimo Marchese - "Dialogues with Time" (daVinci Edition C00028, Japan 2017) *

- "De Temporum Fine Postludia II" (Polyhymnion CD002, USA 2019) *

- "De Temporum Fine Postludia" (Polyhymnion CD001, USA 2016) * Daniel Shoskes - "Weiss Undercover" (USA, 2016) * Daniel Shoskes - "Lautenschmaus" CD (USA, 2011) * Angelo Barricelli - "From Borderlands" (Lira Classica, Italy, 2008) * Thomas Schall - "Die Laute im Barock" LCCD 0202 (The Lute Corner, Switzerland, 2002)

Allonyms and pseudonyms

Since 1996 Turovsky has signed his musical works as ''Sautscheck'', a German

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...

of the second part of his surname as an allonym. Turovsky used a variety of constructions, such as Johann Joachim and Konradin Aemilius, for first names attached to Sautscheck. He represented the works as newly discovered manuscripts by supposed 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century composers from several generations of the same family. Turovsky published ''Mikrokosmos'', a collection of nearly 800

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

-style pieces based on Ukrainian folk melodies under the pseudonyms "Ioannes Leopolita" and "Jacobus Olevsiensis". His works for lute achieved wide circulation under the allonym of Sautscheck and the pseudonyms "Ioannes Leopolita" and "Jacobus Olevsiensis". Musicologist Douglas Alton Smith perceived these works as malicious

hoax A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible. S ...

es and forgeries because of their ostensibly

baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

or earlier styles. The controversy in 2000 over what some considered an outright hoax led to coinage of a new German word, ''Sautscheckerei'', which denoted a musical or literary hoax. He is currently (as of 2023) published by the Lundgren Edition in Sweden under his real name.

Literary activities

Turovsky's poetry translations (from Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and other languages) have appeared in the literary almanacs Asymptote Journal,

Cardinal Points The four cardinal directions or cardinal points are the four main compass directions: north (N), south (S), east (E), and west (W). The corresponding azimuths ( clockwise horizontal angle from north) are 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°. The four ...

, Circumference,''The Germ'', and various web publications. His translations of the early

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...

works of Mykola Bazhan are included in the 2020 edition of Bazhan's "Quiet Spiders Of The Hidden Soul". He also undertook research into the history of the

, a Ukrainian

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...

of the

family, and wrote the chapter on it for the 2011 edition of "Die Laute in Europa"."Die Laute in Europa 2" A.Schlegel & J.Lüdtke

Notes

References

External links

*''Early Music America'', 2007 (summer issue), p. 43
Behind The Scenes: Roman Turovsky
D. Dominick Lombardi interview for Huffington Post
"Roman Turovsky"
EAM interview, Polyhymnion

Delian Society Website

''Marian Meditations'', University of Dayton
Turovsky
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Turovsky-Savchuk, Roman 1961 births Living people Artists from Kyiv 20th-century American classical composers 21st-century American classical composers 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Jewish American classical composers Musicians from Kyiv Jewish American painters American video artists Composers for torban Composers for lute Composers for carillon Postminimalist composers American lutenists Kobzarstvo Torbanists Parsons School of Design alumni Pseudepigraphy Soviet emigrants to the United States Ukrainian emigrants to the United States Ukrainian male painters Ukrainian classical composers Historicist composers Musical hoaxes Shevchenko State Art School alumni American male classical composers Jewish Ukrainian musicians 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American male musicians Vox Saeculorum 21st-century American Jews Composers from New York City 20th-century American male artists