Martyna Zakrzewska – 20th- and 21st-century music performance course (for pianists / ensembles with piano)

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The course is open both to participants with an established repertoire of 20th- and 21st-century music and to instrumentalists with no experience in new music. Pianists and ensembles interested in the course but without a prepared programme may contact Martyna to discuss a suitable repertoire at:

martynaemiliazakrzewska@gmail.com

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MARTYNA ZAKRZEWSKA: born and raised in Racibórz, Silesia; pianist—soloist and chamber musician—specialising in performance of contemporary music, Doctor of Fine Arts. Teacher as a vocation, yogi as a spiritual calling. She was taught in Racibórz, Rybnik, Kraków, and Cologne. MA graduate of the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków, where she studied with prof. Milena Kędra (BA with prof. Mariusz Sielski), and of Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, with prof. David Smeyers (also, class of prof. Pierre-Laurent Aimard). In 2021 she defended, with honours, her doctoral thesis: ‘The pianist in the light of piano literature from the avant-garde of the 1960s up until the present: roles and hearing tropes,’ which involved recording works by Elliott Carter, George Crumb, and Georges Aperghis, among others. In 2025 she began studies in symphonic and operatic conducting at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, under Prof Szymon Bywalec.

As pianist she was awarded special prize in the 2014 edition of the 20^th– & 21^st-Century Music Competition for Young Performers in Radziejowice, second prize in the 23^rd Concorso Luigi Nono, a scholarship from Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and a grant from the President of the City of Kraków. From 2013 to 2015 she was a member of the European Workshop for Contemporary Music, with whom she performed during the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt and at the International Festival of Contemporary Music ‘Warsaw Autumn’. In Cologne she was given the opportunity to work with the Musikfabrik ensemble—a collaboration which concluded with a concert at the Universität der Künste Berlin. As a soloist she has performed in—among other venues and institutions—the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, WDR, Deutschlandfunk, the Lviv Philharmonic, the ‘Świętokrzyska’ Philharmonic, and the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio of the Polish Radio in Warsaw, as well as with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR).

She has performed at many festivals—including Wien Modern, Acht Brücken, ‘Warsaw Autumn’, Witold Lutosławski Festival ‘Chain’ in Warsaw, Kraków’s Sacrum Profanum, Audio Art, ELEMENTI, unsound, and aXes, MUSICA MODERNA in Łódź, NeoArte in Gdańsk, as well as 7 Nurtów [Seven Currents] and TRZY-CZTE-RY in Warsaw—and worked with such conductors as Rüdiger Bohn, Marek Moś, and Jose Luis Castillo. She has given first performances of pieces by—among other composers—Andrzej Kwieciński, Artur Zagajewski, Cezary Duchnowski, Joanna Woźny, Jarosław Płonka, Jacek Sotomski, Marta Śniady, Paweł Malinowski, Monika Szpyrka, Anna Sowa, Nina Fukuoka, Żaneta Rydzewska, and Martyna Kosecka.

She has taken masterclasses from—among other pianists and ensembles—Aleksey Orlovetsky, Nicolas Hodges, Benjamin Kobler, Sebastian Berweck, Maciej Grzybowski, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Modern, and ensemble recherche. She has attended the impuls Academy in Graz, Darmstadt’s Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Ostrava Days, and Stockhausen-kurse in Kürten. In 2022 and 2023 she taught her own piano class during consecutive editions of the Summer New Music Courses for Performers (Wakacyjne Kursy Nowej Muzyki dla Wykonawców) in Bydgoszcz. Her regular teaching includes a class in contemporary music at her alma mater in Kraków.

In 2014 she conceived and founded the Spółdzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble, which she led and was part of until 2023, earning the Siemens Musikstiftung Ensemble Prize among other achievements. The year 2020 saw the premiere of her original project ‘Feminine forms’, focused on women’s performance of pieces by contemporary female composers. Rediscovering Poland’s music, she came across the œuvre of Barbara Buczek, which resulted in a project covering the composer’s complete works for the piano, premiered in 2021 as part of that year’s Sacrum Profanum festival. In 2025 she recorded her original interpretation of Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano by John Cage, a project presented in several concerts around Poland so far. At the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków, where she is assistant professor, since 2024 she has been supervising students’ research and performance group New Wayve, acting as conductor of its student ensembles.