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In the last days of June 2019 at 4pm, the Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra invites you to the concerts as part of the "Summer Concerts at Grochowska Street" series. Wwe will listen to the music of the Land of Cherry Blossom and works from the repertoire of the Sounds of Air trio.

The cycle of afternoon chamber music concerts returns to the home of Sinfonia Varsovia. Just like last year, each Saturday and Sunday at 4:00 p.m. features performances by well-known artists and rising stars on the classical music scene. There will be 30 concerts arranged by common themes: Not just for Orchestra, Japan, Moniuszko, Relax, Travelling, Improvisation, Old Warsaw. The music will be performed by traditional ensembles and some rare configurations, including a reed trio with saxophone and bass clarinet, a cello octet and a flute quartet. The works performed will feature music of many periods and genres – from the Baroque to opera arias, jazz and contemporary and improvised music.

The concert "Japan" on 29 June will feature Japanese musicians who will present not only works by Japanese composers, but also compositions by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Johann Pachelbel, Goerges Bizet, Hermann Necke, Vittoria Montign, Francesco Sartori, Henryk Wieniawski and Fryderyk Chopin. The following day the Sounds of Air trio composed of: Alicja Wołyńczyk (saxophone), Jarosław Gałuszka (accordion) and Agnieszka Kopacka (piano) will present works by Stanisław Moniuszko, Julia Schreitl, Graham Fitkin as well as Arcustico by Anna Maria Huszcza, inspired by the music of Moniuszko's Halka.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: www.sinfoniavarsovia.org 

7th International Copernicus Choir Festival and Competition "Per Musicam ad Astra" will be held on 29 June – 3 July 2019 in Toruń and Chełmża. The event is organized by the "Astrolabium" Choral Music Enthusiasts Society in Toruń and co-organized by the German agency Meeting Music and the Tumska 14 Association in Chełmża.

This year's edition will feature ensembles from the Philippines, Indonesia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan and the USA. The programme of the 7th edition of "Per Musicam ad Astra" will include competition auditions and festival concerts with the participation of the contending choirs top out with a competition for the Nicolaus Copernicus Grand Prix in the amount of 5,000 EUR. Two of the the festival events, the aim of which is to present the broad spectrum of choral music, support the work of young composers and promote Polish culture, deserve special attention.

On 1 July in the Main Hall of the Artus Court, the proMODERN ensemble will present the proMODERN shakespired programme featuring music of Polish composers inspired by the works of Shakespeare. The concert is organized in cooperation with the Marshal's Office of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship as part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the Local Government. A special concert entitled Swinging chimes – the spinner in distress will feature jazz arrangements of nineteenth-century music, including Stanisław Moniuszko's compositions, made by Jarek Kostka.

For all concerts and auditions the entrance is free. Only for the inauguration concert and 2 special concerts there will be free tickets available to collect at the box office of the Artus Court on weekdays between 12-18pm and, subject to availability, before the concert.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://www.facebook.com/PerMusicamAdAstra/ and http://pmaa.pl 

21 concerts will take place between 29 June to 31 August 2019 as part of the 21st Gdańsk Carillon Festival. The programme includes 10 concerts in the St. Catherine Church, 10 concerts in the Main Town Hall and a special concert on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Gdansk Water and Wastewater Infrastructure, featuring milonga workshops.

Every weekend, Gdańsk residents and tourists will have an opportunity to take part in these free summer concerts that are unique in the scale of  Poland: Gdańsk, as the only city in the country, has active carillons. Two of them are in the towers of the St. Catherine Church (50 bells) and the Main Town Hall (37 bells), and the third one called "Gdańsk" is a mobile carillon and consists of 48 bells.

The inauguration will take place at the Hevelius Square and it will feature the Epitaph by Katarzyna Kwiecień-Długosz dedicated to the late Paweł Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdańsk. "Through the Epitaph, we want to commemorate a great friend of carillon music, thanks to which the ancient tradition of our city was restored after the Second World War. The president of Gdańsk has privately funded 2 of 135 bells on which we perform" – says Monika Kaźmierczak, director of the Festival. The inauguration concert will also premiere new compositions: Liquid matter by Beniamin Baczewski and Echos of Gdansk by Jakub Nikiel. Each Friday concert will end with The Hevelius Fountatin Stories by Kamil Cieślik combined with a fountain show.

Full programme available at: https://www.facebook.com/carillony 

62nd International Festival of Organ Music in the Oliva Cathedral – one of the three oldest music festivals in Poland – will take place between 28 June and 27 August 2019.

Once again, organ music will be performed in the historic Gdańsk Oliva Cathedral. The festival concerts will feature renowned organists from Poland and abroad who will present diverse repertoire of different musical periods and styles, as well as world and Polish premieres.

The inauguration concert will be devoted to Polish music. The evening will begin with Latin Mass in E flat major for mixed choir, strings and organ by Stanisław Moniuszko, whose 200th birth anniversary is celebrated this year. After the performance of the Academic Choir of the University of Gdańsk, Hanna Dys (organ) and Mirosław Pachowicz (bassoon) accompanied by the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jan Miłosz Zarzycki will perform works of Andrzej Panufnik and Mieczysław Surzyński.

Full programme available at: https://www.filharmonia.gda.pl/pl/ 

The Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus under the baton of Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk will present works of George Gershwin and Georges Bizet on 29 June 2019 at 7pm at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio. The renowned Polish pianist Paweł Kowalski will perform as a soloist.

The life of a piece of incidental music is often ephemeral – it does not outlast the run of a specific theatrical play for which it was written. Yet there are some exceptions from this rule. L’Arlésienne (also known as The Girl from Arles) is a play based on a novel by an eminent French writer Alphonse Daudet, an eulogist of beauty and the culture of Provence. Bizet arranged four particularly impressive fragments for an orchestra, featuring, inter alia, themes from Provençal folk music. After Bizet’s premature death, his friend, Ernest Guiraud, collated the second suite on the basis of surviving drafts. In time, both spectacular and colourful cycles turned out to be a major success and built up fame of the author, who had died at 37 in poverty, grief-stricken and with a sense that he had been completely underrated…

With the American composer George Gershwin, Bizet shared both his first name and nearly the same age at which both authors, all too soon, died – yet the similarities end here. Gershwin rose quickly to fame and recognition as a composer who, in an original approach, introduced elements of jazz into his symphonic and operatic music. This is also a characteristic of his Concerto in F Major, composed (1925) right after the immensely successful Rhapsody in Blue. In the intervening period of just one year between the two works, Gershwin’s talent and skills developed remarkably – the new piece, orchestrated by the author himself, is also a proof of excellent knowledge of form and facture, which was appreciated by both the audience and the critics, but also by pianists, who often include it in their repertoires.

Piotr Maculewicz

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/gershwin-bizet/