Authors
Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa
Composer, conductor, and educator. She studied conducting and composition with Krzysztof Penderecki at the Kraków Academy of Music, graduating in 1974. She continued her education at conducting masterclasses with Hans Swarowsky in Austria. She held the positions of music director of the Ludowy Theatre in Nowa Huta, later – of the Stary Theatre in Kraków; managing director of Kraków State Philharmonic in 1991–1997, and Minister of Culture and Art in 1997–1999. As the managing and programme director of the NOSPR Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice in 2000–2018, she initiated all of the Orchestra’s projects, including ‘A Marathon of Górecki’s Music’, ‘Train to Kilar’s Music’, and the biennial Festival of Premieres – Polish Modern Music. It was under her tenure that the new NOSPR venue was erected. She also launched the International Karol Szymanowski Music Competition. She was a lecturer at Kraków’s Academy of Music from 1974.
Music for the theatre occupies an important place in her output as a composer. She has written, among others, music for such spectacles as Ionesco’s Exit the King and Molière’s The Misanthrope (Stary Theatre, Kraków), Shakespeare’s Richard III (Wybrzeże Theatre, Gdańsk), Gombrowicz’s Operetta (Wilam Horzyca Theatre, Toruń) as well as Polish Television Theatre (e.g. Słowacki’s The Silver Dream of Salomea, listed among that TV show’s ‘golden hundred’, dir. Krzysztof Nazar). She has also created music arrangements for TV plays.
Having retired, in 2018 she intensely focused on composing music. Her recent world premieres include, among others, Wanda (2021) – the first opera in the composer’s catalogue, setting the words of Cyprian Kamil Norwid’s ‘mystery play’, whose Kraków Opera stage production was recorded in 2023 and released on a Blu-ray disc under the Anaklasis label, alongside with a documentary about the composer. In 2023, the President of Poland conferred on Wnuk- -Nazarowa the highest Polish state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle.
Phot. Bartek Barczyk
Music for the theatre occupies an important place in her output as a composer. She has written, among others, music for such spectacles as Ionesco’s Exit the King and Molière’s The Misanthrope (Stary Theatre, Kraków), Shakespeare’s Richard III (Wybrzeże Theatre, Gdańsk), Gombrowicz’s Operetta (Wilam Horzyca Theatre, Toruń) as well as Polish Television Theatre (e.g. Słowacki’s The Silver Dream of Salomea, listed among that TV show’s ‘golden hundred’, dir. Krzysztof Nazar). She has also created music arrangements for TV plays.
Having retired, in 2018 she intensely focused on composing music. Her recent world premieres include, among others, Wanda (2021) – the first opera in the composer’s catalogue, setting the words of Cyprian Kamil Norwid’s ‘mystery play’, whose Kraków Opera stage production was recorded in 2023 and released on a Blu-ray disc under the Anaklasis label, alongside with a documentary about the composer. In 2023, the President of Poland conferred on Wnuk- -Nazarowa the highest Polish state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle.
Phot. Bartek Barczyk
