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The nominees for the Coryphaeus of Polish Music 2019 award has been announced!

The laureates of the 9th edition of the Coryphaeus Polish Music Award will be announced during a gala ceremony at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio in Warsaw on 1 October 2019 – the International Music Day. The winners selected by the Polish music community will receive statuettes in the categories: 'Personality of the Year', 'Event of the Year', 'Honorary Award' and 'Discovery of the Year'.

On 13 September 2019, the Programme Board for Music of the Institute of Music and Dance selected nominees in all categories from 127 submitted nominations.

Nominees in the category 'Personality of the year':

Łukasz Długosz – flautist;
Jakub Józef Orliński – counter-tenor;
Martyna Pastuszka – violinist;
Maciej Prochaska – musicologist;
Aga Zaryan – jazz vocalist.

Nominees in the category 'Event of the Tear':

Prince Władysław Lubomirski Festival;
Kromer Biecz Festival;
10/40 Kwartet w Muzeach;
Moniuszko for the World;
Moniuszko. Halka.

Nominees in the category 'Discovery of the Year':

Zuzanna Budzyńska i Szymon Ogryzek – chamber musicians;
Janusz Olejniczak – radio music promoter;
Jakub Józef Orliński – counter-tenor;
Tomasz Ritter – pianist;
Sasha Strunin – jazz vocalist.

Due to the nature of the Honorary Award, the winner's name will not be announced until the awards gala, but the candidates will be voted by the Electoral College. From 16 to 19 September 16-19, the audience will vote in the 'Discovery of the Year' category at www.koryfeusz.org.pl. A secret ballot will be held by the Electoral College, which will select the winners in the other three categories.

The voting results will be announced during the gala concert on 1 October 2019 at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio in Warsaw. The winners will receive the Coryphaeus statuette designed by Prof. Adam Myjak. The financial awards are funded by the ZAiKS Association of Authors and the STOART Association of Performing Artists. The event is organized by the Institute of Music and Dance and Polish Radio Programme 2.

More information about the nominees at: www.koryfeusz.org.pl.

Professor Maria Przychodzińska has passed away

Maria Przychodzińska, outstanding professor in the field of music education, passed away on 14 September 2019. Funeral ceremonies will take place on Friday, 20 September, at 1 p.n. at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.

Professor Maria Pokrzywińska for many years was an employee of the Institute of Music at the Faculty of Arts of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. In the years 1991–2005, she was the head of the Department of Music Teaching. She was an outstanding teacher, educator of many generations of students, doctoral students and music teachers, the most distinguished person in music education field in Poland, a co-creator of the Polish concept of musical education, author of numerous textbooks for students and teachers, monographs, several hundred articles as well as methodological and scientific studies.

Warsaw | Sinfonia Varsovia & guests: Azrieli Music Prizes

Works by the 2018 Azrieli Music Prize-Winners – Avner Dorman and Kelly-Marie Murphy – will be given their European premiere by the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra at POLIN Museum on 15 September 2019 at 7 p.m.

Established in 2014 by the Azrieli Foundation, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) offer opportunities for the discovery, creation, performance and celebration of excellence in music composition. The Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music is awarded to a composer who has written the best new major work of Jewish music in the past ten years. In 2018, this Prize was awarded to Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman for his composition Nigunim for violin and orchestra.

The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music is awarded to encourage composers to engage with the question “What is Jewish music?” This prize is given to the composer who proposes a response to this question in the shape of a musical work that displays the utmost creativity, artistry and musical excellence. In 2018, The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music was awarded to Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy to create the work En el escuro es todo uno (In the Darkness All is One) – a double concerto for cello, harp and orchestra.

On 15 September, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra will perform the European premiere of the 2018 Prize-winning works on the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews stage. Maestro Yoav Talmi will conduct the concert which will also feature outstanding Canadian soloists: COULOIR (cellist Ariel Barnes and harpist Heidi Krutzen), violinist Lara St. John and soprano Sharon Azrieli. The program of the concert will also include compositions by Yoav Talmi, Srul Irving Glick and Mieczysław Weinberg.

More information at: https://www.polin.pl/azrieli-music-prizes

Warsaw | Inauguration of the 2019/2020 artistic season of the Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra

Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra will inaugurate the 2019/2020 artistic season with a concert on 14 September 2019 at 7 p.m. at the Witold Lutosławski Polish Radio Concert Studio. The honorary patronage over the event was taken by the Embassy of Switzerland and the Polish UNESCO Committee.

Inauguration of the new season will begin with lively, dazzling and insterstingly instrumentated Overture by Antoni Szałowski – one of the Polish students of Nadia Boulanger, who used to appreciate neoclassic style present as well in this piece.

The Leningrad audience rewarded the premiere of Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich, directed by Mrawiński in 1937, with 30 minutes of applause. Despite accusations of a certain eclecticism, the scale of Shostakovich’s talent determined the lasting success of this symphony, and its neo-Mahlerian power and expression still moves listeners today.

One generation after Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke also struggled against the many obstacles faced by an ambitious artist in the USSR. Today, he is acknowledged as an important precursor and representative of post-modernism in music and his Concerto Grosso No. 1 of 1977 was one of the flagship pieces in this trend, representing a humorous (but not mocking) combination of neo- and post-Baroque, and modern elements.

The inauguration of the new season of the Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra will feature this piece, played by solo performers Marcin Markowicz and Jakub Jakowicz and conducted by Nicolae Moldoveanu, a valuable Romanian conductor who is active as opera and philharmonic performer around the world.

Piotr Maculewicz

More information at: https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/

Szczecin | II MUSIC.DESIGN.FORM Festival 2019

'Audioluminescence' became the slogan of the second edition of the MUSIC.DESIGN.FORM Festival which retuns to the Szczecin Philharmonic on 13-15 September 2019.

Sound and light will be treated literally as an artistic material, and metaphorically as a direction of the festival activities. To address this topic, the organisers invited artists, activists and animators to use music, image and architecture in a non-standard way. Once again, the MDF Festival will create a unique opportunity to experience art with different senses. Being led by sound and light, the participants will get to to unexpected corners of the building and will be surprised by the unusual visualizations in the white Lobby. The facade of the Philharmonic will also shine again.

We can expect concerts by Polish and foreign stars, premiere performances prepared for the festival, as well as exhibitions, workshops and educational meetings. The first day of the Festival will feature a presentation of several projects of the group of Polish composers and performers 'panGenerator', which combines bits and photons in the context of new media art. On 14 September, composer and conductor Michał Janocha will present his multimedia spectacle I hear you are watching. The performance is an artistic and scientific expedition, thanks to which the youngest listeners will discover that modern technologies can "change" the sound of instruments into light. Later that day at the Philharmonic white hall, there will be a Szczecin premiere of the full performance of the latest project of the Kwadrofonik ensemble Urlicht – variations based on the chorale and its counterpoint, which resound separately or enter into a dialogue with each other.

Full programme available at: https://mdf.filharmonia.szczecin.pl

Gdańsk | 1st National Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition

The Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk announces the 1st National Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition for students and graduates of second-degree music schools and art colleges, which will be held on 21-24 November 2019.

The competition aims to promote the work of Stanisław Moniuszko, support talented vocalists of the young generation and their practical preparation for artistic activities. The competition is organized by the Music Academy of Stanisław Moniuszko in Gdańsk under the auspices of the Grand Theater – National Opera.

The competition takes place in two categories: 1) students and graduates of vocal classes of the second degree music schools, who are not students of art universities in the field of "Vocal Studies" and who are under 23 years old by the date of the Competition; 2) students and graduates of art universities in the field of "Vocal studies" who are under 30 years old by the beginning of the Competition.

On-line registration is available until 7 October 2019 at: http://konkurswokalny.amuz.gda.pl/.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Rules and regulations of the competiton are available at: http://konkurswokalny.amuz.gda.pl/

Gdańsk |The International Moniuszko Congress 'Stanisław Moniuszko in Polish and World Culture: New Perspectives and Interpretations'

On 27-28 September 2019, the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk will host the International Moniuszko Congress "Stanisław Moniuszko in Polish and World Culture. New perspectives and interpretations” – one of the most important events of the celebration of the Moniuszko Year.

In connection with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Stanisław Moniuszko – the father of Polish national opera and one of the most important Polish composers – the thematic scope of the Congress includes the composer's biography and work as well as his artistic achievements considered both in the national-cultural context and in the perspective of socio-aesthetic situation in Europe of his time.

The Congress programme will include two plenary lectures and several dozen papers. The meeting is planned in four themetic blocks composed of four parallel sections, during which an international group of speakers will address issues from the following thematic areas:

1. Stanisław Moniuszko, the composer and his work, from the perspective of various humanistic disciplines (musicology, history, theatre studies, film studies, philology, sociology, cultural studies, etc.);

2. Trends, interpretations and perspectives in Moniuszko studies;

3. Nineteenth-century Polish music as the context and backdrop to Moniuszko’s creative output;

4. The concept of Moniuszko’s Polish national opera compared to European currents of national stage output;

5. The role of music in shaping nineteenth-century political and cultural awareness;

6. The dialectic of the socio-political and artistic domains in musical output of the nineteenth century.

The Congress will be accompanied by two concerts organized by its Gdańsk partners. On 27 September, the Fryderyk Chopin Polish Baltic Philharmonic in Gdańsk will hold a concert of Fryderyk Chopin's music, and on 28 September – the Moniuszko Gala, inaugurating the 2019/2020 seson.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme available at: http://www.amuz.gda.pl/events/miedzynarodowy-kongres-moniuszkowski-stanislaw-moniuszko-w-kulturze-polskiej-i-swiatowej-nowe-perspektywy-i-interpretacje/

Marta Ptaszyńska received the American Council for Polish Culture Award

Marta Ptaszyńska was honored with the American Council for Polish Culture Award during the 71st Annual Conference of the American Council for Polish Culture (ACPC), held on 6-8 September 2019 at the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw.

The conference was opened by the ACPC President Thomas Payne. It featured business sessions, lectures and a concert of Wojciech Bafeltowski and Mateusz Błaszczak cello duo. CEOs and delegates from many organizations promoting Polish culture in the United States have reported on their activities. During the festive banquet on 7 September, composer Marta Ptaszyńska received the ACPC Award for Achievements in the Field of Culture. The laudation was given by Dr Jarosław Gołembiowski

Marta Ptaszyńska graduated in composition at the Music Academies in Warsaw and Poznań. For many years, Witold Lutosławski ws her mentor. In 1969-70, she continued her compositional studies with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen in Paris. Since 1972, she lives in the United States. In 1974, she received the Artist Diploma in Composition and Percussion at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She has taught composition at many American universities and music schools, including Bennington College in Vermont, University of California in Berkeley and in Santa Barbara, Indiana University in Bloomington, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Northwestern University in Evanson. In 1998, she became a professor of composition at the University of Chicago. As a lecturer, she requires high-quality work, clear writing and individual character. Her music is published by PWM Edition in Poland and Theodore Presser in the United States. Her works are recorded by CD Accord-Universal, Muza Polish Records, Olympia, Chandos, Dux, ProViva and Bayers Records. For many years, the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players (Contempo) under the guidance of Professor Ptaszyńska presented contemporary compositions during seasonal concerts at the Logan Center at the University of Chicago. During these concerts, many Polish composers performed for the first time in the United States.

Toruń | Inauguration of the 41st season of the Toruń Symphony Orchestra

The inauguration concert of the 41st season of the Toruń Symphony Orchestra, which will take place on 13 September 2019 at 7 p.m. at the CKK Jordanki Concert Hall, will be focused on extremely talented artists of the young generation.

The concert will premiere Hommage à Lipiński written by Maciej Bałenkowski on the commission of the Toruń Symphony Orchestra specially for the inauguration of the 2019/2020 season. By opening the concert with this work, the orchestra will pay a symbolic tribute to the outstanding Polish violinist and composer Karol Lipiński and make an introduction to the upcoming 5th Karol Lipiński International Violin Competition, due to begin on 1 October 2019. Therefore, it is the violin section that will play the dominant role in this work. The composer's aim is to achieve a blend of the traditional and the modern with a touch of his own style (including innovative syncopation, dynamics, energy and lack of routine). The educational element of the project will also be invaluable: nurturing the memory of this great violinist and composer by creating a new work for symphonic orchestra which is dedicated to his memory and bears references to his work; preserving him and the role he played in Polish music; promoting his music and imprinting it into the consciousness of the listeners.

The programme will also include virtuoso Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23 by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, featuring Spanish pianist Leo de María as a soloist. The concert will culminate in Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 by Johannes Brahms. The Toruń Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by maestro Dainius Pavilionis (Lithuania).

More information at: www.tos.art.pl