Stefania Turkewich

Stefania Ivanivna Turkewich-Lukianovych was born on 25 April 1898 and worked as a composer, pianist, and musicologist. She became the first woman in Ukraine to compose music professionally, carving out space in a field that had belonged entirely to men. The Soviet authorities banned her works, keeping them from performance and publication within the USSR. She continued through the prohibition, writing music the state would not allow its citizens to hear. Stefania Turkewich died on 8 April 1977.