Performers

Poland’s first autonomous radio symphony orchestra, established in 1935 by the legendary conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg, and reactivated after World War II in Katowice under Witold Rowicki. It won international renown and became an ambassador of Polish culture, working with the world’s top artists such as Leonard Bernstein, Martha Argerich, and Arthur Rubinstein, and performing in major concert venues. Since its inception its performances have regularly been broadcast by Polish Radio.

A New York composer of ambient music, who has recently resided in California. Despite his classical music education he has focused for more than 30 years on various types of electronic and experimental music. Original video projections are another major area of his activity as an artist.

A versatile cellist moving with ease in both classical and improvised music. He completed his studies with Kazimierz Michalik at the Academy (now G. and K. Bacewicz University) of Music in Łódź. He obtained a Witold Lutosławski scholarship to study with William Pleeth in London.

Polish accordionist and composer, founder and leader of Bester Quartet; graduate of Cracow’s Academy of Music; prize-winner in numerous nation- wide and international accordion competitions. His individual style, characterised by a broad colouristic palette, technical freedom and expressive quality, results from a combination of many musical styles with a classical education and improvisation.

Founded on Jarosław Bester’s initiative in 1997 as The Cracow Klezmer Band, it consists of four eminent instrumentalists with classical and jazz education, playing a stylistically highly varied repertoire which assimilates elements of classical, jazz, avant-garde, and contemporary chamber music. Improvisation plays a major role in their work as a form-building element and the band’s musical axis.

He studied organ with Józef Serafin at the Academy of Music in Kraków and with Zsigmond Száthmary at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, as well as solo performance with Daniel Roth at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Frankfurt (the Konzertexamen-Orgel diploma), receiving scholarships from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. He also took part in master classes on historically informed performance practice.

A soprano; graduate of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice (class of Jan Ballarin) and the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna (class of Helena Łazarska). She has won prizes in many nationwide and international vocal competitions.

Having graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, he studied in Leipzig (music theory with Stephan Krehl, composition with Max Reger and conducting with Arthur Nikisch). He made his debut in Dresden, in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1906).