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As part of the fourth edition of WarszeMuzik, on 1-29 August 2020, chamber music will return to Warsaw Ghetto's remaining buldings. We will visit a tenement house at 20 Chłodna Street (the Clock House), the house of Mieczysław Weinberg at 66 Żelazna Street, and an old tenement house at 41 Chłodna Street.

In 2020, the repertoire will expand to include forgotten works of great composers of the pre-war Warsaw, and add some new contexts. For the first time the programme will feature music by Józef Koffler, probably the first enthusiast of the dodecaphonic technique in Poland and an active member of the Board of the Polish Composers' Union, whose life was brutally interrupted by the Second World War. During the inaugural concert, Hashtag Strings will perform his String Trio.
We will also get to know the work of the composer-in-residence at this year's festival – Yair Klartag, who combines musical "archeology" with modernity. His Half Tiger, Half Poet for solo violin will be performed from the upper window, symbolically referring to the figure of the greatest poet of the Warsaw Ghetto – Władysław Szlengel.

During the final concert of the festival, at the POLIN Museum, musicians from the Hashtag Ensemble will premiere Yair Klartag's Voglio e non vorrei, in which the composer raises the subject of "the work of memory", referring to the story of his grandfather, the pre-war chorister of the Great Synagogue in Tłomackie. The work was co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund as part of the "Composing Commissions" programme operated by the Institute of Music and Dance.

For the second time, the backyard concerts of WarszeMuzik will feature music by Franz Schubert, the first composer in the history of classical music, who worked closely with the synagogue and wrote liturgical music to Hebrew texts. Mieczysław Weinberg, the patron of the WarszeMuzik festival, was also a great admirer of Schubert's music. Since the very first WarszeMuzik concert in 2017, the festival is also inspired by the figure of Władysław Szpilman. His unpretentious, simple and nostalgic Mazurka convinces us of the deep bond with Poland of so many Warsaw Jews from the North District, the forever lost, outstanding figures of culture and art.

Despite the imposed distance due to the COVID19 pandemic, you will be able to listen to music from the balconies, windows and staircases. 

Full programme of the Festival is availabe at: http://warszemuzik.org/pl/program 

The third premiere as part of the series “Contemporary chamber miniature in the times of pandemic. First performances” will take place on 20 August 2020 at 12.00 p.m. on the Academy of Music in Poznań's website, Facebook profile and YouTube channel. We will hear Splashing Sounds by Barbara Kaszuba.

As Barbara Kaszuba points out, "The composition is intended for the Roland FR X7 digital accordion with electronics. The musical material consists of samples recorded by Łukasz Nowakowski, then electronically transformed by the composer. The work was inspired by the composer's audiovisual impressions taken from the TV show Celebrity Splash, which took place at the Termy Maltańskie swimming pool in Poznań in 2015 – the sounds of a body hitting the water, cascades of water rising and falling, clearly visible circles on water surface. Splashing sounds is an open form; the performance is based on a different variant each time. Anna Kokocińska prepared a movement interpretation of the composition as a choreographic premiere of the piece. "

The series “Contemporary chamber miniature in the times of pandemic. First performances ” presents first performances of works by composers associated with the Academy of Music in Poznań. On subsequent Thursdays we will hear miniatures composed by the Academy's teachers: Radosław Mateja, PhD (27 August), Prof. Monika Kędziora (3 September), Ewa Fabiańska-Jelińska, PhD (10 September), Michał Janocha, PhD (17 September), Prof. Artur Kroschel (24 September), Prof. Zbigniew Kozub (1 October).

Link to the online premiere: https://youtu.be/RpB5lM1mmaI 

The Art Deco Group Music Agency invites children aged 7-12 learning to play instruments to participate in the workshop "Don't be afraid to improvise!", which will take place online on 18-21 August 2020 on 12.00 p.m. The classes will be conducted by the Trillingen Duo ensemble, composed of multi-instrumentalist Iwona Jędruch and double bass player Małgorzata Kołcz.

The workshops are free of charge and are intended for children learning to play any instruments at music schools or institutions that conduct music classes. The workshops include 4 online classes (approx. 45 minutes each) and 1 mini concert (approx. 40 minutes) presenting the effects of the work with participants, which will be held live in September this year. The classes are conducted by artists of various specializations, who use the language of contemporary music, employ various unconventional techniques of producing sound, and consciously avoid the major-minor system that reigns supreme in music education and popular music.

During the workshops, we will talk to children about contemporary music as well as rules and methods of improvisation, illustrating these themes with musical examples. We will conduct exercises and games that will help children absorb the transferred knowledge more easily. We will also show how useful in making music and improvising is ear training, rarely liked in schools, so there will be a lot of listening exercises during the classes. In this project, it is very important to make music together and collaborate in a group, so children will participate in classes with their instruments and will actively improvise under the guidance of the teachers.

Classes will be held online and will only be open to participants and their supervisors. The concert summarizing the work of the workshop participants will take place in September and will be broadcast on the FB profile and the website of the Art Deco Group Music Agency.

The workshop group will have a maximum of 5 participants. Participants are registered by their parents / guardians only via the form available at http://artdecogroup.eu/formularz-zgloszeniowy-nbsi-2020/. Please attach to the form a video file presenting the workshop participant performing any programme (max 5 MB). Contact: phone: 790 395 228 or e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Workshops and concerts will be recorded for documentation purposes.

Co-financed by the National Centre for Culture as part of the "Culture on the Web" programme.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Atom String Quartet, one of the most intriguing string quartets in the world made up of great Polish jazz musicians, will perform on 16 August 2020 as part of the 8th Emanacje Music Festival at the Elżbieta and Krzysztof Penderecki Arboretum in Lusławice.

Krzysztof Penderecki gained fame as an uncompromising avant-gardist, and then turned to tradition in an equally uncompromising way. For years he was not afraid of meetings and confrontation with new phenomena in culture. In his career, the composer went through a period of fascination with free jazz music: “I remember that at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s I met Frank Zappa, who liked my music very much and asked me about composing techniques. Around that time, I also wrote a jazz piece which I conducted at the Donaueschingen Festival. ' Actions – a concert album by Penderecki, Don Cherry and The New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra, produced by the legendary Joachim Ernst Berendt and recorded at the festival in Donaueschingen, was released in 1971.

Penderecki continued to inspire new generations of artists. In 2013 Piotr Orzechowski 'Pianohooligan' found in the music of the Polish composer the lost spirit of jazz. In 2019 Krzysztof Penderecki's work was interpreted by the Atom String Quartet. The upcoming concert will feature chamber and solo works from the composer's youthful period, interspersed with Three Pieces in the Old Style, created by the composer from fragments of his film music to The Saragossa Manuscript by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The Capriccio for tuba solo has been expanded in the quartet's interpretation, and the jazz tone distances the piece significantly from the original. An equally radical setting, somewhat humorous, full of dissonances pleasantly irritating the ear, was given in the interpretation of the ensemble to Three Miniatures for clarinet and piano. The closest to the original are Three Pieces in Old Style, which always begin with a quote from the original.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme is available at: www.emanacje.pl 

The Institute of Music and Dance and the "Niepodległa" Programme Office invite you to concerts of classical and jazz music on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw 1920, which will take place on 15 August 2020 in the courtyard of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

A specially selected repertoire will be a journey to the times of, among others, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Karol Szymanowski. We will also hear contemporary, jazz interpretations of their work.  At 1.00 p.m. Karol Radziwonowicz (piano), Sławomir Tomasik (violin) and Robert Morawski (piano) will perform Paderewski's piano and chamber works; at. 4.00 p.m. Urszula Kryger (mezzo-soprano), Zuzanna Nalewajek (soprano), Dagmara Barna (mezzo-soprano) and Paweł Cłapiński (piano) will present Paderewski's and Szymanowski's songs; while at 7.00 p.m. we will hear Dorota Miśkiewicz (vocal) and Atom String Quartet, a band that connects the world of classical music and jazz. The concerts will be hosted by Anna Butrym.

The programme includes works by Fryderyk Chopin, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Karol Szymanowski, Witold Lutosławski, Roman Maciejewski and Zbigniew Seifert. Free admisssion!

More information at: https://imit.org.pl/programy/departament-muzyki/4466