Obituary of Rafael Wenke

Rafael Jaroslav Wenke, concert violinist, conductor and music teacher, entered into eternal rest at St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Cedar Grove, NJ, his comfortable home for the last two years, on April 15th, 2020. Due to the Corona scourge, a Memorial Mass will be celebrated at a time and place to be determined at a later date. A private interment will take place at St. Andrew’s Ukrainian Memorial Cemetery, South Bound Brook, NJ. Funeral arrangements are by Higgins Home for Funerals in Watchung, NJ. Maestro Rafael was born in the village of Zhadova, Bukovina Province, Ukraine, in the green and beautiful foothills of the mighty Carpathian Mountains. His love for music became part of his soul, when on the weekend nights of his childhood, he heard gypsy music being performed by some of Ukraine’s greatest folk violinists in his father’s catering hall. The Second World War tore Rafael and his family away from Ukraine and they wound up in Salzburg, Austria, where he started formal violin lessons. In 1949 Rafael and his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Newark, NJ. Next, he graduated West Side High School, while continuing private violin lessons and being an award winning violinist in Newark’s All City Music Competition and Orchestra, culminating with a performance on Newark’s new public television station, WNET – Channel 13 in the mid-1950’s. He formalized his music education by attending The Mannes College of Music in New York City (then part of the State University of New York, now part of the New School) and graduating with a B.S. degree in violin as a major and conducting as a minor in 1960. With his diploma he received the Ralph P. Sozio Memorial Medal for academic achievement. Later Rafael, held his first professional recital in Judson Hall, New York City with Carl Sebok, who became his long time accompanist. They collaborated on many musical projects for the next forty years, ranging from violin concerts, musicals, light opera and sacred music. After college, Rafael also became a violin teacher and member of the Newark and New York City branches of the Ukrainian Music Institute of America (UMI), teaching students in NY and NJ for the next fifty years until his retirement in the summer of 2016. He also served in various UMI executive board positions over the years, but teaching was his love. He also taught music extension classes in Queens Community College for over 25 years. In the late 1960’s, he embarked on a US concert tour of Ukrainian classical music, including the works of Barvinsky, Groudin, and others, with his second accompanist Daria Hordynsky-Karanowych. The purpose of this tour was to promote Ukrainian classical music and show Americans that Ukrainians are not Russian, but a distinct and separate people. He continued this work of showing North Americans that Ukrainian culture is separate of Russia, by being the longtime concert master of the Ukrainian Opera Ensemble of NY. From the 1960’s to the 1980’s, Rafael and the opera ensemble toured the US and Canada, putting on various Ukrainian productions, including “Kateryna”, “Natalka Poltavka”, “Cossacks Beyond the Danube”, a dramatic reading of “Woods Song” with incidental music and many more offerings. Robert Sherman of Classical Radio WQXR-NY, became a friend of and expert on Ukrainian music and opera, because of the work of Rafael and his contemporaries during the dark days of the Cold War. In the late 1980’s to the early 2000’s, he became involved in bringing classical music to the masses in his work with the Schiller Foundation. Out of this collaboration, he met pianist Peter Tarsio and they created the Tappan Chamber Ensemble to take on the challenge of sharing classical music with people from all strata of society. They performed everywhere, from wealthy Scarsdale to struggling East Orange, from Westchester salons to NY homeless benefits and shelters. Their classical music concerts left a positive mark on all who heard them. One of Rafael’s proudest moments was a tribute to Paul Robeson held in 1995 in Washington, DC, where he and his Schiller Foundation student and professional musicians performed and touched the soul of the inner city with hope and inspiration. In 1980, Metropolitan Mystyslav (later Patriarch) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, called upon Rafael to be part of a group to help in the renewal of liturgical music. The group recommended to add more of the Baroque Ukrainian composer Dmytro Bortniansky’s liturgical music to services. This was all done in preparation for the One Thousandth Anniversary of Ukrainian Christianity, which was in 1988. Out of his work for the Church, came the honor of conducting the annual Lenten Concerts of the unified Metropolitan NYC Choir of the Orthodox Church, leading up to 1988. This culminatated in Rafael conducting the combined Catholic and Orthodox Choirs of NJ, over 200 strong, at the Garden State Arts Center, singing the great Ukrainian prayer, “Lord of Heaven and Earth” during the NJ/NY/PA one day celebration of 1,000 years of Ukrainian Christianity. It was a truly an ecumenical moment, which has not been repeated since. Rafael always spoke of duplicating such a moment of church unity after that and he was sad that it has not happened. Before his retirement, from 2005 to 2015, he was cantor at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Irvington, dedicating his prayerful song to the ecumenical movement. He knew his talent was from God. When the church in Irvington closed, he wound down his teaching career and retired in 2016. He continued to share music till his death, by playing the piano for his co-residents at St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center. Predeceased by his parents, Gregor and Alexandrina Wenke, and his sister Livia, Rafael is survived by his sisters, Sylvia Kuziw and Daria Calluori, niece Maria “Kvitka” Koch and husband Danny, nephews, Cornell, Lubomyr and Marc Anthony Datz and Alex Kuziw, great-niece, Danielle Koch and husband Robert Szczubelek, great-nephews, Nicholas, Roark and Zachary Koch and much beloved family in North America, Ukraine and Italy. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Ukrainian History and Education Center of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, PO Box 495, South Bound Brook, NJ 08880.