Authors
A leading Polish jazz pianist, graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music (1987–1990, Oscar Peterson Prize winner), semi-finalist of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition in Washington, and member of the orchestra led by the legendary clarinettist Artie Shaw.
An outstanding composer and teacher. One of the leading composers of avant-garde music in Poland and Europe. He was born on 2nd March 1927 in Czechowice- Dziedzice, and died on 12th October 2001 in Berlin. From his childhood, Witold Szalonek was particularly sensitive to the sounds around him. In 1949, he took up studies with Wanda Chmielowska (piano), and later (after a hand injury) – with Bolesław Woytowicz (composition) at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. He continued his education with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Witold Szalonek is considered one of the precursors of Polish sonorism.
Composer, pianist, arranger and conductor Adam Sztaba graduated from Zbigniew Rudziński’s composition class at Warsaw’s Chopin Academy (now – University) of Music. He made his debut as a composer in the musical Fatamorgana? staged at the Dramatyczny Theatre in Koszalin (1993).
Born on 3rd October 1882 on the family estate at Timoshevka, now Ukraine, he died on 29th March 1937 in Lausanne. Szymanowski learned the piano from his father and with Gustav Neuhaus in Elizavetgrad. In 1901 he left for Warsaw, where he took composition lessons with Zygmunt Noskowski. He joined the Young Polish Composers’ Publishing Company in 1905.
Writer, poet and essayist born in 1962. She studied psychology at the University of Warsaw. After her first literary successes, she gave up her work as a psychotherapist and moved to the Sudetes – currently she lives in Krajanów near Nowa Ruda. Despite the fact that her first short stories were published in Na przełaj in 1979, it is her 1993 book The Journey of the Book-People that is widely considered her literary debut. The book brought her the Polish Publishers’ Association Award.
Writer and journalist, born in 1979 in Żernica. A sociologist by education, he graduated from the Interdepartmental Individual Humanist Studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice.
Composer and educator, born on 17th June 1930 in Vilnius. He studied composition with Julius Juzeliūnas at Vilnius Conservatory (1952–1957) and with Bolesław Woytowicz at Warsaw’s State Higher School of Music (1957–1960). In 1963 and 1966 he continued his composition studies under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
Graphic artist and writer, columnist, author of essays and children’s books, born in 1972 in Warsaw. He designs covers, posters, and logotypes. For several years he created weekly comic-strip commentaries for ‘Tygodnik Powszechny’ weekly. He has also written texts for, among others, ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ daily as well as ‘Autoportret’, ‘Literatura na świecie’, ‘Charaktery’, ‘Pismo’, and ‘Polityka’ magazines. His accolades include the ‘Polityka’ weekly’s 2017 Passport Award for literature and the Nike Literary Award for his book ‘Things I Didn’t Throw Out’, which also won the Witold Gombrowicz Literary Prize and was nominated for Gdynia Literary Prize.
