Hryhory Bazhul

Bazhul died on October 17, 1989 in Sydney, aged 83.

During the ensemble's existence it undertook numerous performances by itself and with the Boyan Choir under the direction of Vasyl Matiash. In 1970, on the basis of the bandura ensemble, Bazhul organised a school for bandura playing.

He resigned from the Chorus and founded and directed a bandura quintet, the Veresai Brotherhood, which toured the Ukrainian communities in the displaced persons camps in Germany with a program agitating against the return to the Soviet Union of Ukrainians, to great acclaim until 1948.

At the end of the war, in September 1948, Bazhul migrated to Australia. He performed solo at various community functions and ethnic festivals. He established a bandura ensemble in 1958 which toured Australia and made a recording in 1961, when it disbanded. In 1964, he re-established the bandura, which later became the Hnat Khotkevych Ukrainian Bandurist Ensemble. He remained as director until 1971 when Peter Deriashnyj replaced him.

Hryhory Bazhul published a number of inflammatory anti-Soviet articles, during the Nazi occupation of Kharkiv (1941–1943), in the occupational press about the treatment of kobzars and bandurists by the Soviet regime. He attempted to organise a bandurist capella in Kharkiv and performed numerous solo concerts locally under the non-de-plume of Keleberd. To escape repercussions from the advancing Soviet forces Bazhul moved west.

In February 1938, Khotkevych was arrested by the NKVD (Soviet secret police) and in October he was shot in Kharkiv as an enemy of the state with all his possessions confiscated. Khotkevych's widow gave Bazhul a number of her husband's manuscripts for safekeeping. Some 60 manuscripts were preserved by Bazhul, including the original of the epic Bayda.

In the early 1934, Bazhul was arrested again and charged with improperly giving bread ration coupons to the Khotkevych family during the period of the Famine-Holodomor. He was sentenced to two years in exile in Siberia, northern Caucasus and Tayshet. After serving his sentence he returned to Kharkiv in 1936.

In the late 1920s he was arrested and spent 2 years of penal labour at the Berdyansk agricultural labour colony. On his return to Kharkiv he became interested in the bandura after hearing the blind kobzar, Pavlo Keleberda, playing on the streets. In 1931 he enrolled in bandura classes and studied with Hnat Khotkevych in the second group of students established at the Kharkiv worker's conservatory. In 1933, after the classes were closed, he continued to study privately with Khotkevych and soon became a close friend of his family.

Hryhory Ivanovych Bazhul was born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (in present-day Ukraine), his father was a rail road engineer and his family moved to Kharkiv in 1911. After completing his studies at the Institute of Grain Culture, he was employed as an agronomist.

Hryhory Ivanovych Bazhul (Ukrainian: Григорій Іванович Бажул transcribed as Georg Baschul) (January 22, 1906 — October 17, 1989) was a Ukrainian bandurist and publisher of articles on bandura history from Poltava, Russian Empire. After World War II he emigrated to Australia settling in Sydney.