Wojciech Kamionka – horn

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He graduated from the Academy of Music in Kraków in the class of French horn of senior lecturer Kazimierz Pamuła. At the same time, he obtained a diploma from the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe (Germany), where in 2002-2007 he studied in the class of Professor Will Sanders – a soloist of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. In the academic year 2007/08, he continued to develop his skills at the University of Music Maastricht (Netherlands) in the Master of Music programme.

In 2011, he earned his doctoral degree in the artistic discipline of instrumental music. In the same year, he joined the teaching staff at his alma mater, where he teaches a class in the main instrument and chamber music. Since 2012, he has been employed as an assistant professor. In 2020, he obtained a postdoctoral degree.
He has participated in a number of masterclasses for French horn players in Poland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and the USA, taught by such authorities as Radovan Vlatkovic, Dale Clevenger, Stefan Dohr, Marie – Luise Neunecker, Erich Penzel, Andrew Bain, Wolfgang Gaag, Christian Lampert, Peter Damm, Michael Höltzel, William VerMeulen and others.

He has taken part as first French horn player in orchestral courses such as Idyllwild Arts Summer Program (USA), Internationale Junge Orchesterakademie Pleystein (Germany) and the Festival Junger Künstler Bayreuth (Germany), where he performed the Wagner tuba part. He has been a finalist in national competitions. For his achievements, he has been awarded several times the scholarship of the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Poland, the Creative Scholarship of the Mayor of the City of Krakow and the German Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst. In the 2001/02 season, he performed as first French horn player in the Capella Cracoviensis orchestra. He has collaborated with symphonic ensembles, including the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra, Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bachsolisten Munich, Beethoven Academy Orchestra and Krakow Opera Orchestra.

He is actively involved in the education of younger French horn players. He conducts courses, methodology workshops and delivers lectures in Poland and abroad (Germany, the Netherlands, Latvia, Ukraine, Thailand, Brazil). He is a lecturer at The Academy of the French Horn – the horn workshops at the Paderewski Centre in Kąśna Dolna. He works as an organisational coordinator of the Polish editions of the International Hornweek horn festival and masterclass (at the Academy of Music in Kraków in 2015 and 2019), on the subject of which Stanisław Markowski made a documentary musical film entitled The Hornweek, as well as a number of artistic and educational projects dedicated to the French horn (including Spirit of Horn, Weekend with the Horn at the Academy of Music in Kraków and others). He is regularly invited to be a member of the jury of national competitions (including those under the auspices of the Artistic Education Centre (CEA)) as well as international ones.

Parallel to his academic activities, he teaches a French horn class at the Bronisław Rutkowski Primary and Secondary Music School in Krakow, where he also served as head of the Wind Instruments, Accordion and Percussion Section from 2013 to 2018.

Wojciech Kamionka is the author of a book entitled The French Horn and its Virtuosos in the Context of American Film Music (The Publishing House of the Academy of Music in Kraków, 2014), a dozen or so publications mainly of educational nature, and the first textbook on horn playing in the Polish language in over 60 years entitled The Modern School of French Horn Playing. Learning with Pleasure. (The Polish Music Publishing House, 2021).