On November 26, 2018 at 12.00 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw (2 Okólnik St.), there will be a ceremony of awarding the honorary doctor's degree to Maestro Arvo Pärt, one of the greatest composers of the turn of the 20th and the 21th century.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (1935) is a graduate of the Tallinn State Conservatory. In the years 1958-1967 he worked in the Estonian Radio as a sound engineer, and at the same time he composed. During this period, a twelve-note Obituary, sonorist Perpetuum mobile, the first collage in Estonian music Collage über B-A-C-H were created. Credo (1968) became a turning point both in the artist's life and in his work. The composer openly admitted that he was a believer, for which he fell out of favor of the authorities for a few years, and the only area where the composer could officially perform was film music.

In 1968 Pärt rejected all modernist styles, techniques and forms of expression he used in his concert music so far –  and withdrew. The composer began studying Gregorian chant, the Notre Dame school and Renaissance polyphony. Part appeared again on the music scene in 1976 presenting a new, unusually original musical language, defined as tintinnabuli (from Latin tintinnabulum – bell), which was also a technique, style and confession of the composer's faith (Orthodox). Much of Pärt's output is composed of works based on liturgical texts and Christian prayers. In 2010, after thirty years of emigration (he lived in Austria and Germany), Arvo Pärt returned permanently to Estonia, where he and his wife established the Arvo Pärt Center in Laulasmaa.

During the solemn ceremony on November 26, the laudation will be given by the supervisor, prof. Paweł Łukaszewski, while the artistic part will be filled with the performance of the Chopin University Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Rafał Janiak, who will perform Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten by the new Honorary Doctor..