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A series of concerts and seminars on the 30th anniversary of the death of the eminent Polish composer and publicist of the Radio Free Europe, Roman Palester, will be held in Warsaw on 25-27 October 2019.

The University of Warsaw invites you to a three-day series of events organized by the University of Warsaw Foundation and the University of Warsaw Library with the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The project emphasizes the artist's relationship with the university, and pays tribute to him on the 30th anniversary of his death. The versatility of Palester's compositional output will be presented during two monographic concerts: symphony concert in the Auditorium Maximum and chamber music concert in the Collegium Politicum of the University of Warsaw.

Outstanding musicians will present both his neoclassical works from the inter-war and war periods (including the stage premiere of the beautiful choral cantata Kołacze to words by Szymon Szymonowic), as well as examples of later works dealing with advanced musical means. In addition, two seminars will recall the important activities of the journalist of the Radio Free Europe station in Poland and his involvement in the creation of film music, especially in the 1930s. An example will be the movie Girls of Nowolipki (1937) directed by Józef Lejtes.

Admission to the events is free.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme available at: https://www.buw.uw.edu.pl/

The 8th "NeoArte – Synthesizer of Arts" – international festival presenting the most interesting trends in contemporary music and art – will be held in Gdańsk on 23-26 October 2019.

The originator of the festival that focuses on the synthesis of arts is the Tri-City ensemble NeoQuartet, winner of the Pomeranian Artistic Award of 2019. Contemporary composers create works combining video art and theater, visual artists create sound installations, theater and dance are moving towards performative art. It is becoming increasingly difficult to set boundaries between various fields of creativity, and it is becoming easier to combine them.

This year's festival will last five days, featuring nine concerts, two artistic installations, a radio play and several performances. Composition students will have the opportunity to take part in composer workshops led by the festival's patron Gwyn Pritchard, as well as performance workshops presented by Alwynne Pritchard. Children and youth will be able to participate in electronic music creation classes led by Krzysztof Topolski. Each concert is planned as a multidisciplinary performance, which makes the audience paricipate in the artistic process.

In the Gdańsk garrison, the audience will participate and co-create the premiere of the latest project of the Krakow artist Piotr Peszat – Into the Heart of Hearts (2019) for acoustic and electric string quartet, live-electronics and live-video. The finale of the festival, "NeoArte Night" in the New Synagogue, is a challenge for both the audience and performers – the 12-hour concert marathon will premiere latest works by contemporary Polish composers written for piano and string chamber orchestra.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme available at: http://neoarte.pl/ 

The Warsaw Wind Ensemble Conducting Competition 2019 is the first edition of the international competition for wind orchestra conductors, which will be held in Warsaw on 23-27 October 2019.

The competition will consist of three stages and 20 conductors from 11 countries will compete. Participants will be judged by a jury chaired by Prof. Szymon Kawalla, PhD, Dean of the Faculty of Composition, Conducting and Music Theory at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.

The first stage will take place from 23 to 24 October (8:00–10:00 p.m.) at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music (auditorium 338). The conductors will be accompanied by two pianists, and the performance will include Dance Sacrale from the ballet The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky and the Bajka Concert Overture by Stanisław Moniuszko. The next stages of the competition will take place in the District Cultural Centre Ursynów. The second stage will be held from 25 to 26 October (4:00–10:00 p.m.). Conductors will lead the Festival Orchestra consisting of musicians from Youth Warsaw Wind Orchestra. The repertoire will include two pieces: Serenade in D minor for wind instruments by Antoni Dvorzak and Film Variations on the theme of the aria “Szumią jodły na szczycie” by Stanisław Moniuszko by Tomasz Dudziński.

On 25 and 26 October, after the competition auditions (8:00 and 9:00 p.m.) there will also be lectures given by pedagogues, composers and musicians (the speakers will be pedagogue and composer Ignacy Zalewski, composer Paweł Pudło, trumpeter musician Bartłomiej Łubian and composer Artur Słotwiński).

The final of the competition will take place on Sunday, 27 October (4:00–7:30 p.m.), during which the 6 best conductors will lead a much larger Festival Orchestra consisting of musicians from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences Representative Orchestra and Youth Warsaw Wind Orchestra. In the repertoire of the finale, Second Suite in F major for military orchestra by Gustav Holst and Overture Year 1918 by Artur Słotwiński. The culmination will be the Gala Concert, which will take place at the end of the Competition, on 27 October at 8:00 p.m. in District Cultural Centre Ursynów. The winners of the Competition will be announced during the concert. The best conductors will receive prizes and conduct the Festival Orchestra, which will perform works from the competition repertoire.

All events are free and all auditions are open to the public.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: www.wwecc.warsawwindmusic.pl 

The 11th "Schaeffer's Era" Festival will take place on 24 October 2019 at 8 p.m. in the Artistic Pool (Basen Artystyczny) in Warsaw (6 M. Konopnicka St.).

The "Schaeffer's Era" Festival is a cyclical event that combines music, theater and dance and promotes the rich creative output of the Polish contemporary composer, music theoretician, playwright, philosopher and graphic artist Bogusław Schaeffer. The Festival takes place in the autumn season in Warsaw, regularly since 2009. It is a multimedia and audiovisual event inspired by sound, word, movement, and image, which uses a collage technique.

11th "Schaeffer's Era" combines presentation of works by Bogusław Schaeffer with the celebration of his 90th birthday. The professor died less than a month after his 90th birthday, so this year's Festival will also be a symbolic farewell to the Master. A multimedia spectacle The Eternal Carousel directed by Maciej Sobociński combines performances by Polish and foreign stage artists with a display of Schaeffer's graphic works as well as fragments of his musical works in the interpretation and arrangement of young Polish musicians. Among hte performers there will be actors Lidia Bogaczówna, Izabela Warykiewicz, Sean Palmer, Marcel Wiercichowski, accordionist and composer Marcin Wyrostek with the band Corazone, singer Janusz Radek, rapper Andy Ninvalle, violinist and composer Patryk Zakrocki, pianist Maciej Piszek and composer and pianist Andrzej Karałow.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: http://aureaporta.eu 

The LutosAir Quintet, one of the most active wind ensembles performing contemporary music, will premiere three works by Polish composers at the chamber music concert on 24 October 2019 at 7 p.m. at the National Forum of Music in Wrocław.

The Thursday concert will begin with the performance of Six Bagatelles for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti, who went down in history as a great avant-garde artist. The Bagatelles are his early work, written in 1953, before leaving his homeland, and the musical language used in it is easier on the ear than his later compositions. They are arrangements of another of his compositions, the Musica ricercata for piano. The title of the fifth one, Béla Bartók in memoriam, points to an important source of inspiration for Ligeti during this period. Despite the fact that these miniatures are graceful and accessible, the Soviet censorship decided that the last Bagatelle was too radical and did not allow it to be performed during the premiere of the work in 1956.

Other works in the programme were written by contemporary Polish composers. The Wrocław audience will also have an opportunity to listen to the world premieres of the Brass Sextet by the Wrocław composer Ewa Podgórska, Dr JanKeys by the violist and composer Dawid Pajdzik and the Concert Suite for bass clarinet and wind quintet by Nikola Kołodziejczyk. The commission of the latter work was subsidised from the funds of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage – Culture Promotion Fund as part of the "Composing Commissions" programme realised by the Institute of Music and Dance.

More information at: https://www.nfm.wroclaw.pl/component/nfmcalendar/event/7269