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Kraków-based Spółdzielnia Muzyczna Contemporary Ensemble will perform on the stage at Grochowska 272 on 18 August 2020 at 8.00 p.m. Artists famous for their unconventional interpretations of the greatest avant-garde musicians will premiere Plants Concerto with Pianosong by Piotr Peszat, a composer associated with the ensemble.

The piece inspired by Jonathan Harvey's work, Bird Concerto with Pianosong, will metaphorically give voice to plants – the bioelectric activity of flowers measured during the concert will shape the entire work. The repertoire of the evening will also include Jagoda Szmytka's Electrified memories of bloody cherries, Carola Bauckholt's Laufwerk – inspired by the works of Czesław Miłosz, Øyvind Torvunda's Neon Forest Space – peculiarly referring to the primeval forest, and Matthew Shlomowitz's Jazz in the Park from the Popular Contexts 7: Public Domain Music series – combining street sounds with music.

Experimental Tuesdays, a new series of contemporary music concerts, examine the relationship between music and nature as well as respond to the challenges of modernity, including man’s influence on the environment, the climate crisis, the progressing digitization of life, the lack of algorithmic transparency, and the lack of internet privacy. The series features four ensembles: Ensemble Garage, Hashtag Ensemble, Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, and Small Instruments. Concerts are held as a part of the 20th edition of the Sinfonia Varsovia’s Festival to Its City Festival.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://www.sinfoniavarsovia.org/

The 16th edition of the "Chopin and his Europe" International Music Festival will run from 15 August  to 1 September 2020. Apart from Polish music, this year's programme will present works by Ludwig van Beethoven in masterful interpretations as part of the celebration of the composer's 250th birth anniversary. Most concerts will be available on YouTube and social media of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

Despite these difficult times, which pose major challenges to all and sundry, we invite you once again to take part in the celebration of music that is the “Chopin and His Europe” Festival. Nearly 30 concerts will be held this year. Most will be solo recitals by great masters of piano playing, both on contemporary and historical instruments. We will listen to a number of pianists associated with the Chopin Competition, including two of its winners – Yulianna Avdeeva and Kevin Kenner. World-renowned orchestras and chamber ensembles will present 10 concerts, featuring, among others, Karol Szymanowski's Myths, and Krzysztof Penderecki's String Quartet No. 3. Beethoven's string quartets will be performed during four evenings by the Belcea Quartet. In addition to vocal recitals by outstanding soloists, a special gem for music lovers will be a concert performance of Stanisław Moniuszko’s The Countess, the first on period instruments. The work will be conducted by Fabio Biondi, with an international group of soloists, Europa Galante and the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Choir.

A large portion of the festival concerts will be streamed free of charge on the Chopin Institute’s YouTube channel and on its social media page. Selected concerts will also be broadcast by Polish Radio. Nonetheless, the organisers invite you to experience the concerts in person, in the concert hall, where all safety rules are followed (limited number of seats, the obligation to cover your nose and mouth and disinfect your hands).

Tickets for festival concerts scheduled for 15 to 23 August are currently available online at www.bilety.nifc.pl and at the ticket offices of the Chopin Museum in Warsaw (11 a.m.– 7 p.m., Tuesday thru Sunday). Ticket sales for concerts planned for 24–31 August will begin on 14 August.

Full programme is available at: https://festiwal.nifc.pl/pl 

As part of the fourth edition of WarszeMuzik, on 1-29 August 2020, chamber music will return to Warsaw Ghetto's remaining buldings. We will visit a tenement house at 20 Chłodna Street (the Clock House), the house of Mieczysław Weinberg at 66 Żelazna Street, and an old tenement house at 41 Chłodna Street.

In 2020, the repertoire will expand to include forgotten works of great composers of the pre-war Warsaw, and add some new contexts. For the first time the programme will feature music by Józef Koffler, probably the first enthusiast of the dodecaphonic technique in Poland and an active member of the Board of the Polish Composers' Union, whose life was brutally interrupted by the Second World War. During the inaugural concert, Hashtag Strings will perform his String Trio.
We will also get to know the work of the composer-in-residence at this year's festival – Yair Klartag, who combines musical "archeology" with modernity. His Half Tiger, Half Poet for solo violin will be performed from the upper window, symbolically referring to the figure of the greatest poet of the Warsaw Ghetto – Władysław Szlengel.

During the final concert of the festival, at the POLIN Museum, musicians from the Hashtag Ensemble will premiere Yair Klartag's Voglio e non vorrei, in which the composer raises the subject of "the work of memory", referring to the story of his grandfather, the pre-war chorister of the Great Synagogue in Tłomackie. The work was co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund as part of the "Composing Commissions" programme operated by the Institute of Music and Dance.

For the second time, the backyard concerts of WarszeMuzik will feature music by Franz Schubert, the first composer in the history of classical music, who worked closely with the synagogue and wrote liturgical music to Hebrew texts. Mieczysław Weinberg, the patron of the WarszeMuzik festival, was also a great admirer of Schubert's music. Since the very first WarszeMuzik concert in 2017, the festival is also inspired by the figure of Władysław Szpilman. His unpretentious, simple and nostalgic Mazurka convinces us of the deep bond with Poland of so many Warsaw Jews from the North District, the forever lost, outstanding figures of culture and art.

Despite the imposed distance due to the COVID19 pandemic, you will be able to listen to music from the balconies, windows and staircases. 

Full programme of the Festival is availabe at: http://warszemuzik.org/pl/program 

The third premiere as part of the series “Contemporary chamber miniature in the times of pandemic. First performances” will take place on 20 August 2020 at 12.00 p.m. on the Academy of Music in Poznań's website, Facebook profile and YouTube channel. We will hear Splashing Sounds by Barbara Kaszuba.

As Barbara Kaszuba points out, "The composition is intended for the Roland FR X7 digital accordion with electronics. The musical material consists of samples recorded by Łukasz Nowakowski, then electronically transformed by the composer. The work was inspired by the composer's audiovisual impressions taken from the TV show Celebrity Splash, which took place at the Termy Maltańskie swimming pool in Poznań in 2015 – the sounds of a body hitting the water, cascades of water rising and falling, clearly visible circles on water surface. Splashing sounds is an open form; the performance is based on a different variant each time. Anna Kokocińska prepared a movement interpretation of the composition as a choreographic premiere of the piece. "

The series “Contemporary chamber miniature in the times of pandemic. First performances ” presents first performances of works by composers associated with the Academy of Music in Poznań. On subsequent Thursdays we will hear miniatures composed by the Academy's teachers: Radosław Mateja, PhD (27 August), Prof. Monika Kędziora (3 September), Ewa Fabiańska-Jelińska, PhD (10 September), Michał Janocha, PhD (17 September), Prof. Artur Kroschel (24 September), Prof. Zbigniew Kozub (1 October).

Link to the online premiere: https://youtu.be/RpB5lM1mmaI 

The Art Deco Group Music Agency invites children aged 7-12 learning to play instruments to participate in the workshop "Don't be afraid to improvise!", which will take place online on 18-21 August 2020 on 12.00 p.m. The classes will be conducted by the Trillingen Duo ensemble, composed of multi-instrumentalist Iwona Jędruch and double bass player Małgorzata Kołcz.

The workshops are free of charge and are intended for children learning to play any instruments at music schools or institutions that conduct music classes. The workshops include 4 online classes (approx. 45 minutes each) and 1 mini concert (approx. 40 minutes) presenting the effects of the work with participants, which will be held live in September this year. The classes are conducted by artists of various specializations, who use the language of contemporary music, employ various unconventional techniques of producing sound, and consciously avoid the major-minor system that reigns supreme in music education and popular music.

During the workshops, we will talk to children about contemporary music as well as rules and methods of improvisation, illustrating these themes with musical examples. We will conduct exercises and games that will help children absorb the transferred knowledge more easily. We will also show how useful in making music and improvising is ear training, rarely liked in schools, so there will be a lot of listening exercises during the classes. In this project, it is very important to make music together and collaborate in a group, so children will participate in classes with their instruments and will actively improvise under the guidance of the teachers.

Classes will be held online and will only be open to participants and their supervisors. The concert summarizing the work of the workshop participants will take place in September and will be broadcast on the FB profile and the website of the Art Deco Group Music Agency.

The workshop group will have a maximum of 5 participants. Participants are registered by their parents / guardians only via the form available at http://artdecogroup.eu/formularz-zgloszeniowy-nbsi-2020/. Please attach to the form a video file presenting the workshop participant performing any programme (max 5 MB). Contact: phone: 790 395 228 or e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Workshops and concerts will be recorded for documentation purposes.

Co-financed by the National Centre for Culture as part of the "Culture on the Web" programme.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.