Download Program Notes - Polish Music Center

PROGRAM NOTES & COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES:
BALTAKAS—PASAKA
A person tells a story. For himself, for someone else—it’s not important. What’s important is the desire to tell the story.
The necessity! Itself a fairy-tale too... The text of Pasaka is based on different parts of Indian mythology—creation of the
world, creation of the night, the birth of death, Markandea’s visions, etc. But the relationship between them—succession,
presence of the speaker, evolution in the music—create a new dramaturgic level, one which is no less important than the
basic story.
The piece can only be performed in the original language: by using a text in Lithuanian, the composer attempts to
distance the audience from the narrative so that they could use their fantasy and listen to the MUSICAL act. –Vykintas
Baltakas
*
*
*
After his composition and conducting studies in Lithuania, Vykintas Baltakas (b. 1972) went on to
study abroad in the early 1990s, and gradually became successfully integrated in the
international music scene. His musical style has been significantly influenced not only by his
studies with Wolfgang Rihm and Peter Eötvös but also by his experiences as a conductor
specializing in contemporary music repertoire. Compositions by Vykintas Baltakas are
characterized by precise research and subsequent deliberate manipulation of the musical
material. He does not try to conform to any stylistic conventions and establishes his own musical
criteria for each work. His oeuvre also contains some elements of theatre, wit, and irony.
However, each work by this highly self-critical composer is extremely tightly structured. Baltakas
often reworks his pieces after the premiere, making his whole oeuvre look like a single large-scale
work in progress.
***
***
***
***
***
BRUZDOWICZ — ÉROTIQUES
Written in 1966, Érotiques is one of my early works. A set of five self-contained pieces, it is a loosely constructed cycle
that explores sensitive and delicate sonorities. Marta Korecka, a well-known Polish pianist for whom the cycle was
written, was in love and requested that the work be given this particular title. Since its premiere, over ninety pianists
have performed and recorded this work worldwide.— Joanna Bruzdowicz
*
*
*
Joanna Bruzdowicz (b. 1943) began to compose at the age of six and studied
composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano with Irena Protasiewicz and Wanda
Osakiewicz at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw, where she received her
M.A. in 1966. Shortly thereafter Bruzdowicz travelled on a scholarship from the
French government to study with Nadia Boulanger, Oliver Messiaen and Pierre
Schaeffer. While in Paris, she joined the electro-acoustic Groupe de Recherches
Musicales and wrote her doctoral thesis Mathematics and Logic in Contemporary
Music at the Sorbonne. After first settling in Belgium, Ms. Bruzdowicz now divides
her time between Paris and southern France.
Bruzdowicz’s catalogue of compositions includes several operas, ballets, symphonic
and chamber music, works for children, and numerous soundtracks for film and
television. Her music has been praised for its “poetic palette of sound” and for being
“ultramodern and refined” while remaining expressive and personal. Bruzdowicz’s
Stabat Mater written in 1993 for a special ceremony held at Forest Lawn Memorial
in Glendale, California, was attended by city and county representatives, members
of the Polish government, and over one thousand of guests. This choral work is
dedicated to the founder of the Polish Music Center, Wanda Wilk. In 2001
Bruzdowicz received the highest distinction from the Polish government, the Order of Polonia Restituta, for her
contribution to Polish culture that included producing radio programs for radio stations in France, Germany, Belgium,
Italy, Spain and the United States. Ms. Bruzdowicz is a co-founder of various musical organizations, including the Chopin
and Szymanowski Association in Belgium, Jeunesses Musicales in Poland, GIMEP in France, and the International
Encounters in Music in Catalonia. Active as music critic and guest lecturer in composition around the world, Ms.
Bruzdowicz is also a recipient of numerous commissions, including the Bastia Opera in Corsica, where her latest largescale work, Lella—Oratorio Profane was world-premiered in November of 2011.
Four of Joanna Bruzdowicz’s works, Trio dei Due Mondi, Tre Contre Tre, Piano Concerto, and Marlos Grosso Brasileiras
were donated by the composer in 1986 and 2003, and are held in the Manuscript Collection of the Polish Music Center.
***
***
***
***
***
ČIURLIONIS—FIVE CHARACTER PIECES
Mikalojus Čiurlionis’ piano works are impressively numerous and short. There exist over 200 works for the instrument,
the majority of them character pieces. While Čiurlionis did create some larger works, his output is heavily dominated by
these miniatures that are nevertheless just as concentrated in ideas as the longer pieces; the Prelude in B minor, Op.
26/1, for example passes through a complete initial theme, an answer, and a varied restatement of the initial theme, all
in a minute and a half. It was as though the composer didn’t want to overstay his welcome. Čiurlionis often favors very
dense textures, worthy of his contemporary Alexander Scriabin, and he shares the same concern with Scriabin in regard
to harmonic color and polyrhythm.
The Five Character Pieces presented today are representative of Čiurlionis’ perpetually evolving style. It is natural to
wonder what heights he may have reached had his life continued past the age of thirty-six. [Notes by Aron Kallay]
*
*
*
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) is the most seminal and emblematic figure
in the history of Lithuania’s national culture. At the junction of the 19th and the 20th
centuries he embodied the aspirations of a national revival movement and linked them
with the latest tendencies in European art of the time. As a composer, he was educated at
the Music Institute in Warsaw and at the Leipzig Conservatory. But later in his life,
Čiurlionis’ ambition to become a professional artist started interfering increasingly with his
work as a composer. Čiurlionis first became known for his pioneering paintings, in which he
synthesized his musical experiences and often gave musical titles (e.g. Prelude, Fugue and
Sonata) to the most visionary among his works. It was only later that he became generally
regarded as the first modern Lithuanian composer who incorporated national elements
and some constructivist principles in the series of expressive piano miniatures, written in
the late romantic idiom (1905–1909). Olivier Messiaen referred to him as to “a remarkable
composer of music and paintings,” noting an unusual and deep linkage between his works
of music and art. Čiurlionis composed the first Lithuanian symphonic works—Miške (In the
Forest, 1902) and Jūra (The Sea, 1907)—which remain the most popular Lithuanian
orchestral pieces to this day. His ideas about Lithuanian national art and its future became ideological statements for
generations to come. In his articles and letters, he emphasized the significance of archaic folklore to the cultivation of
modern art: “Our credo is our age-old songs and our music of the future.” Čiurlionis’ legacy of paintings, graphic art,
musical and literary works, remains an inexhaustible source of influence and inspiration to many generations of
Lithuanian artists.
***
***
***
***
***
DEBUSSY — SONATA FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO
The cycle of chamber Sonatas by Claude Debussy dates from the last three years of his life. With his plans for six such
works were cut short by cancer, only three of the Sonatas for chamber ensembles (cello and piano; flute, viola and harp;
and violin and piano) were actually completed.
Written in 1917, the Sonata for Violin and Piano was premiered on May 5, 1917, with violinist Gaston Poulet and the
composer. It was Debussy’s last work and the May 1917 concert was his last public performance. The Sonata has three
brief movements, Allegro vivo, Intermède: Fantasque et léger, and Finale: Très animé. Just like the other two Sonatas,
the moods here are generally introspective and finely-etched, whilst the harmonic language is distinctly modal and
instrumental textures are deliberately spare. The opening movement’s piano chords set a chain of harmonic
transformations passionately traded throughout its course between the two instruments. The feline nimbleness of the
middle movement, an intermezzo-caprice, conjures up a fleeting, ephemeral imagery, whilst the ostinato-based piano
accompaniment launches the final movement with a quick violin reference to the opening movement and follows it with
a torrential passagework that embraces the entire compass of violin’s range. [Notes by Marek Żebrowski]
*
*
*
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was one of the most influential composers in the
history of modern music. After taking piano and violin lessons as a child, Debussy
entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 10, where he studied composition
with Ernest Guiraud, harmony with Émile Durand, piano with Antoine-François
Marmontel, and organ with César Franck. Working as a tutor for Nadezhda von
Meck, a wealthy patron of music and arts (and a close friend of Tchaikovsky)
launched Debussy on a chain of important formative experiences. Through
Madame von Meck he was introduced to the exotic world of Russian music and
culture. Soon thereafter, as the winner of the 1884 Prix de Rome, Debussy
travelled to Italy on a composer’s scholarship and had the opportunity to sample
Italian musical tradition first hand. In the late 1880s Debussy visited Bayreuth to
attend productions of several of Wagner’s operas and attended the Exposition
Universelle in Paris in 1889, where he heard Javanese gamelan music for the first
time. From 1889 until the end of his life Debussy was a resident of Paris and a
prominent member of the city’s musical elite.
His early works (Deux Arabesques pour piano, Suite bergamasque, and String Quartet in G minor) composed in the early
1890s are still fairly traditional in terms of form and the harmonic language employed. Debussy’s fascination with
Symbolist poets, especially Mallarmé, led to his first truly path-breaking work, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, where
instrumental textures and colors were used in a totally novel way. The Three Nocturnes for Orchestra (1899) continued
to explore the rich and delicate orchestral timbres, whist his opera, Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) based on a play by
Maurice Maeterlinck, charted a new course for the operatic genre in a post-Wagnerian world. Debussy’s symphonic
trilogy La mer (completed in 1905) represents another milestone of early twentieth century French orchestral music. His
piano music from the early 1900s, including Pour le piano (1901), Estampes (1903), Images, Vol I and II (1905-1907),
Children’s Corner (1908), and the two volumes of Preludes (1910), is also notable for a pioneering treatment of
instrumental textures and colors, and for the inventive use of pedal techniques. Along with the ballet, Jeux (1912), the
Etudes for piano and En blanc et noir for two pianos (both dating from 1915) represent Debussy’s attempt at exploration
of modern harmonies.
Diagnosed with rectal cancer in 1909, Debussy underwent a surgery in 1916 and spent the last years of his life in
declining health. He died during a particularly intense German bombardment of Paris in the waning days of World War I
and there were no public funeral ceremonies.
***
***
***
***
***
GÓRECKI — PIANO SONATA NO. 1
I remember during my studies being fascinated, not so much by the works of the most fashionable Western composers of
those times, but by the works of Bartók, especially the second movement of his Piano Sonata. My first encounter with this
work was something of a shock, the like of which I have never experienced before or since. I literally had the impression
that the whole world was caving on me. I had not the slightest idea that music could be constructed from such sounds,
from such structures—and such wonderful music! Szymanowski’s Third Piano Sonata also proved to be very important for
me. And the work of Ives and Messiaen made a huge impression on me. Not to mention the early Romantics or other
Viennese Classics. – Henryk Mikołaj Górecki
Bearing opus number 6, Górecki’s Piano Sonata No. 1 has undergone many transformations since its original version was
put to paper in 1956. The work is dedicated to Jadwiga Rurańska, a piano student Górecki met during his studies at the
Music Academy in Katowice and married in 1959. The world premiere of the Sonata was given almost three decades
later at the 1984 Lerchenborg Music Festival in Denmark. On that occasion only the first movement was heard in its
revised version, performed by Eugeniusz Knapik. Pianist Paul Crossley gave the first complete performance of the 1990
revised version at the Helsinki Biennale concert on 17 March 1991. [Notes by Marek Żebrowski]
*
*
*
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933-2010) began music lessons at the age of ten, first studying violin and piano with a local
instrument maker. His first compositions date from the early 1950s and, when he applied to the Katowice Academy of
Music in 1955, he already had a considerable portfolio of works. His studies with Bolesław Szabelski culminated in a
1958 Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra concert devoted exclusively to Górecki’s works which then led to an invitation to
the Warsaw Autumn Contemporary Music Festival, where his compositions were programmed annually until the mid1970s.
After graduating with top honors in 1960, Górecki received First
Prize at the Young Composers’ Competition for Monologhi. A
scholarship for studies in Paris followed and led to friendships
with Michał Spisak and Pierre Boulez. From the early 1960s,
Górecki received commissions including Scontri, Op. 17 (written
for the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra), Refrain for
Orchestra, Op. 21 (written for the International
Telecommunications Union and premiered by the Orchestre de la
Suisse Romande in Geneva in 1965), and Symphony No. 2
“Copernican” (written for The Kosciuszko Foundation in New
York), among others. Since 1965 Górecki’s professional life also
included teaching at the Music Academy in Katowice, where he
served as vice-chancellor (1975-1979) until resigning for political
reasons. Several of Górecki’s students went on to prominent
careers as composers, including Rafał Augustyn, Andrzej
Krzanowski, Eugeniusz Knapik, and his son, Mikołaj Górecki.
Inspired by Szymanowski and Bartók, Górecki’s musical language evolved in the 1960s towards the modernist and
serialist avant-garde, but by the early 1970s his music became more contemplative and much less dissonant. His first
sacred work, Ad Matrem, Op. 29, was dedicated to the memory of his mother and premiered at the Warsaw Autumn
Festival in 1972.
Górecki’s celebrated Symphony No. 3 “Sorrowful Songs,” Op. 36, was commissioned by the Südwestfunk in BadenBaden, Germany, and first performed in 1977 in Royan, France. The premiere went generally unnoticed and the Third
Symphony was rediscovered only after a sensationally successful 1992 recording with soprano Dawn Upshaw and the
London Sinfonietta, led by David Zinnman. On 3 October 1997 Górecki made a rare appearance on the conductor’s
podium to perform the work that made him internationally famous with the USC Thornton Symphony Orchestra. The
concert was part of a week-long “Górecki Autumn Festival” at USC that also included performances of Górecki’s solo and
chamber music, seminars, master classes, and lectures.
Górecki’s compositional style represents a successful melding of romanticism, minimalism, and complex yet transparent
harmonic structures. From the late 1980s until the end of his life, Górecki turned to chamber music, exploring the
territory that he had once covered as a young composer. Among a handful of works from the last decades of his life,
Górecki’s collaboration with the Kronos Quartet was most notable and fruitful, leading to three string quartets
commissioned by the ensemble and premiered in 1988, 1991, and 2005.
***
***
***
***
***
KRAUSAS — UN-INTERMEZZI
The UN-intermezzi are solo piano pieces inspired by the novel Un-Lun Dun by the English writer, China Miéville. The story
presents an alternate and parallel universe to the city of London. China’s writing is so wonderfully poetic that I’ve stolen
(with his permission!) several of his phrases as the titles for each of the pieces.
The first, each dreams the other, is inspired by the floating quality of Brahms’ Intermezzo Op. 119 no. 1 in B minor. The
second, somewhere very else…, is inspired by the gigue from Bach’s B-flat Major Partita with its energetic bounce and
hand crossing. It is dedicated to the pianist Aron Kallay. In Mièville’s novel this is the first instance where the
protagonists (London dwellers) arrive in Un-Lundun, a world previously unknown to them. The third intermezzo, a bowl
for shadows… is an homage to the whimsical style of Erik Satie, specifically his fourth Gnossienne.—Veronika Krausas
*
*
Canadian composer Veronika Krausas (b. 1963) has had her
works performed internationally. Toronto’s Globe & Mail
described “her works, whose organic, lyrical sense of storytelling
are supported by a rigid formal elegance, give her audiences a
sense that nature’s frozen objects are springing to life.”
*
Krausas has received commissions from the Penderecki String
Quartet, San Francisco Choral Artists and the Alexander String
Quartet, ERGO Projects, Continuum Music, Toca Loca, and two
commissions for Motion Music (Canada) including a Millennium
Project Grant, and several Interdisciplinary Grants from the
University of Southern California Arts Initiative and Subito grants
from the American Composers Forum. She has music composition
degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montréal, and a doctorate from the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles.
Since 1998 Krausas has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events in Los Angeles that incorporate her
works with dance, acrobatics and video. The Los Angeles Times reviewer Mark Swed said of the 2010 LA production of
Krausas’ chamber opera The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, “Something novel this way comes.” A commission for
the 25th Anniversary of the San Francisco Choral Artists and the Alexander String Quartet, using text by the poet
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was premiered in May 2011 in San Francisco. Her electronic work Waterland with video by
Quintan Ana Wikswo, received its European premiere in Lyon France in October and had several international
performances. In September her works were used by Wikswo for her solo exhibit Prophecy of Place at the Yeshiva
Museum in New York City.
Krausas is an Assistant Professor in the Composition Department and the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Theory at
USC, on the advisory board of Jacaranda Music, an associate artist of The Industry, a pre-concert lecturer at the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, and an artist with Catalysis Projects.
***
***
***
***
***
MEYER — IMAGINARY VARIATIONS FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO, OP. 114
I happen to agree with Debussy’s beautiful remark that music begins where the words end. I also think that, contrary to
the widespread practice during the last century, the composer’s task is to write music rather than talk about it. Even if
the composer’s musings about matters technical or aesthetical may contain some useful information for the listener,
making comments about a specific work inevitably leads to the imposition of the composer’s own vision, whereas the
power of music lies in its ability to evoke a multitude of reactions. This is why I shall limit myself to disclosing that the
Imaginary Variations owes its existence to the beautiful recordings made by Janet Packer that I listened to with great
pleasure before embarking on my task of composing the work. The title itself is but a reflection of a rather wicked idea:
the piece was constructed on the model of classical variations and the listener may hear it as a constant transformation
of a musical thought. In truth, the work consists of twelve short movements that may sound like variations but, in reality,
they are not.—Krzysztof Meyer
Imaginary Variations was commissioned by Janet Packer with funding from the Pro Violino Foundation, Inc. It was
premiered by Ms. Packer and pianist Geoffrey Burleson on November 9, 2011 at the Consulate General of the Republic
of Poland in Chicago.
*
*
*
Krzysztof Meyer (b. 1943) began to study piano at the age of
five. A native of Kraków, he studied theory and composition
with Stanisław Wiechowicz and Krzysztof Penderecki,
graduating from the Kraków Music Academy with distinction
in 1965 and earning his theory degree a year later. During the
years 1964, 1966, and 1968, Meyer was a student of Nadia
Boulanger in Paris. In the mid 1960s Meyer appeared as
pianist with the group “MW2 Ensemble,” presenting concerts
of contemporary music throughout Europe, and performing
many of his solo and chamber music compositions.
From 1966 to 1987 Krzysztof Meyer taught at the Academy of
Music in Kraków, also chairing the Department of Music
Theory from 1972 to 1975. Since 1987 he has been professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne and
a frequent lecturer on the subject of contemporary music in many countries, including Russia, Germany, Austria, Brazil,
and Japan. Between the years 1985-1989 Meyer held the office of President of the Polish Composers’ Union.
Krzysztof Meyer is a winner of numerous awards, including the First Prize at the competition for young composers in
France (1966), the Aaron Copland Scholarship (1966), the First Prize for Symphony No. 3 at Fitelberg Competition (1968),
Grand Prix at the Prince Pierre de Monaco International Composers’ Competition for the opera Cyberiada (1970), and
the two-time recipient of the Special Mention at Tribune Internationale des Compositeurs UNESCO in Paris for String
Quartet No. 2 and String Quartet No. 3 (1970/1976). He is also a laureate of the Polish Ministry of Culture Award (in
1973 and 1975), the First Prize winner of the Karol Szymanowski Competition in Warsaw for Symphony No.4 (1974), and
the recipient of a Special Medal bestowed by the Government of Brazil for his String Quartet No. 4 and Concerto retro
(1975 and 1977). Among other distinguished prizes that Krzysztof Meyer has received are the Gotfried-von-Herder-Preis
(Vienna, 1984), the annual Award of the Polish Composers’ Union (Warsaw, 1992), the Jurzykowski Award (New York,
1993) and Johann-Stamitz-Preis (Mannheim, 1996). Krzysztof Meyer is a member of the Freie Akademie der Künste in
Mannheim.
Meyer’s compositions have been performed all over the world and he received a number of commissions from many
eminent soloists, including Peter Pears, Aurèle Nicolet, Lothar Faber, Heinz Holliger, David Geringas, Ivan Monighetti,
and Dmitri Sitkovetsky. Meyer’s Symphony No. 1 was one of the three obligatory contemporary compositions at the
International Course for Conductors in Monaco directed by Igor Markevich in 1971, and his Hommage à Johannes
Brahms at the Conductors’ Competition in Dublin in 1999. Krzysztof Meyer was a composer in residence for the Cologne
Philharmonic during the 1991-1992 Season, and in Seattle, Washington, in 1996.
Krzysztof Meyer is also recognized as a prominent author of books and articles on the subject of contemporary music.
His monograph on the life and work of Dmitri Shostakovich (Kraków, 1973)—the first biography of this composer
available in Poland—was expanded for a new edition (Paris, 1994) and became an international bestseller that was
translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and Japanese. With his wife, Danuta Gwizdalanka, Meyer has
published a two-volume biography of Witold Lutosławski (Kraków, 2003-2004). Krzysztof Meyer’s most recent volume
Mistrzowie i przyjaciele [Masters and Friends], was published by the Polish Music Publishers, PWM, in 2012.
***
***
***
***
***
WIENIAWSKI — SECOND VIOLIN CONCERTO, OP. 22 & CAPRICCIO-VALSE, OP. 7
Henryk Wieniawski’s D minor Violin Concerto, Op. 22, was premiered in 1862 in St. Petersburg with Anton Rubinstein
conducting the Imperial Orchestra. The score was published in 1879 and the Concerto is cast in a traditional threemovement layout. The middle movement, Romance, is often programmed on its own; it features a beautifully flowing
melody that rises to a passionate climax and leads into a cadenza that—in the full performance of the work—introduces
the brilliant closing movement based on a catchy Gypsy tune.
The Capriccio-Valse, Op. 7 typifies the late Romantic elegance of Wieniawski’s salon pieces. A few bars of piano
introduction lead the audience to focus the first solo violin entry that immediately takes and holds center stage. A
graceful main subject based on an arpeggiated passage followed by huge melodic leaps appears throughout the work
and achieves its apotheosis in the closing section that trades the musical material between the violin and piano. A series
of stratospheric harmonics followed by highly effective pianissimo pizzicato chords close this ever-enduring crowd
pleaser. [Notes by Marek Żebrowski]
*
*
*
Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880) was a great violin virtuoso and a notable composer of
very popular short works for violin and piano and two imposing concertos for violin
and orchestra. Born in Lublin, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), he entered
Paris Conservatoire at the age of 8, and began his worldwide touring career as a
teenager, often appearing in concert with his pianist brother, Józef. In 1860 he
married Isabella Hampton, whose parents opposed the union until they heard
Wieniawski’s Légende, Op. 17, and withdrew their objections. From 1860-1872
Wieniawski lived in St. Petersburg, where he taught, performed as concertmaster in
the Russian Musical Society Orchestra, and appeared with his own string quartet. He
made a two-year tour of the United States in 1872 with his colleague from St.
Petersburg, the legendary Russian virtuoso, Anton Rubinstein. By 1875 Wieniawski
moved to Belgium to assume violin professorship at the Conservatoire Royal de
Bruxelles. During this time he toured Europe and frequently concertized in London as
violinist and violist for the Beethoven Quartet Society. A punishing schedule of
teaching and performing contributed to a heart attack Wieniawski suffered on a tour of Russia. He died in Moscow and
was buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.
Wieniawski’s phenomenal virtuosity is reflected in all of his extant compositions (there is also a long list of his works
now considered lost). The 10 Études-Caprices, Scherzo-Tarantelle, two Polonaises de concert (Op. 4 and Op. 21), and the
Two Mazurkas Op. 19, all feature complex double stops, harmonics, left hand pizzicato, and require acrobatic right hand
bowing technique.
***
***
***
***
***
ŻEBROWSKI - FIVE PRELUDES FOR PIANO
My Five Preludes for Piano date from the year 2000 and were commissioned by Robert Raymond, an engineer, pianist,
and dedicated music lover in Boston, Massachusetts, who was also a long-time piano student of mine. Positioned
somewhere between a suite and a group of etudes that explore various technical and musical aspects of piano playing,
the Five Preludes nonetheless share some motivic relationships among each other that bind the entire set together.—
Marek Żebrowski
*
*
*
Marek Żebrowski (b. 1953) began studying piano at the age of five. After graduating with
the highest honors from the Poznań Music Lyceum, he studied with Robert Casadesus and
Nadia Boulanger in France and Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory of Music
in Boston, where he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees. Hailed as “firm and
eminently musical” by the Boston Globe, “strong and noble” by the Washington Post, and
accorded highest accolades by the world press, Marek Żebrowski has appeared as soloist in
recital and with symphony orchestras throughout the world. He has recorded works by
Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Scriabin and Prokofiev for the Polish Radio and works by
Ravel and Prokofiev for Apollo Records in Germany, and his performances and compositions
are featured on the Titanic Records and Harmonia Mundi labels. Recognized as a composer
with a catalogue of orchestral and chamber works, piano compositions and transcriptions, and film and stage scores,
Żebrowski has received commissions from Meet the Composer and The New England String Quartet, among others, as
well as composition prizes in the Netherlands. Żebrowski’s works were premiered throughout the United States,
Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, and South Africa. For the past several years he has collaborated with director
David Lynch and their album of free improvisations, Polish Night Music, was released in April of 2008.
Marek Żebrowski has lectured for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Harvard University, and
The New England Conservatory of Music, and for several years was a contributing writer for the Boston Book Review. He
has given master classes and has coached various chamber music ensembles and chamber orchestras. His academic
career included teaching at the University of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and UCLA.
Currently, Żebrowski resides in Los Angeles and serves as the Program Director for the Polish Music Center at USC and
the Artistic Director of the Paderewski Festival in Paso Robles, California. Marek Żebrowski is a Steinway Artist. In recent
years he has authored Celebrating Chopin & Paderewski, Paderewski in California and several other books about film
directors and cinematographers, published by the Tumult Foundation.