Stephen M. Wolownik

He later moved to Mount Laurel, New Jersey, where he was an assistant library director at the Mount Laurel Public Library until his death in 2000. Wolownik is buried in Lawn Croft Cemetery in Linwood, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of his boyhood home.

Wolownik also continued directing the Penn Balalaika Orchestra until its demise in 1996.

Wolownik received a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded the University of Pennsylvania Balalaika Orchestra (commonly known as "PennBO" or "Penn Balalaika Orchestra") in 1964. PennBO was unique in that, with the exception of the Tamburitzans at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University, it was the only university-level music ensemble dedicated solely to Eastern European music.

Stephen M. "Steve" Wolownik (July 22, 1946 – May 18, 2000) was a pioneer in the Russian and Eastern European music community in the United States. He was a co-founder of the Balalaika and Domra Association of America.

Wolownik is largely credited with reviving interest in the cabaret-style balalaika ensemble in the United States and reconnecting the balalaika and domra with their peasant roots. Popular in the 1910s and 1920s, the cabaret-style ensemble usually had no more than 10 members and played in small, intimate settings, often performing pieces which were not precisely Russian in appellation, but perhaps more Gypsy, Jewish, or Ukrainian in origin. The cabaret-style ensemble fell into disfavor with the rise of Communism, as Soviet government preferred huge Andreyev-style state-run ensembles with elaborate orchestral arrangements as sort of an antipode to the Western orchestra.