Sławomir Dobrzański,
pianist; b. 11th May 1968 in Wrocław. He is a graduate of the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, where he studied with Regina Smendzianka, Andrzej Dutkiewicz and Jerzy Maciejewski. He also studied privately with Kajetan Mochtak in Warsaw. In 1992-1994 he studied at the University of Kansas in Lawrence with Jack Winerock. He also participated in summer courses in Switzerland and Poland, where he studied piano performance with Malcolm Frager, Mieczysław Horoszowski and Victor Merzhanov. Additionally, he benefited from coaching sessions with Nina Tichman in Mainz, Germany, and Jan Gorbaty in New York City. In 2001, he graduated with the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Connecticut, where he was a student of Neal Larrabee and Zelma Bodzin.
Dobrzański has won many piano competitions, including MTNA Wurlitzer Collegiate Artist Competition, Naftzger Young Artist Competition and Lincoln Symphony Young Artist Competition.
He has taken part in numerous music festivals, both as a lecturer and concert artist, among others at the International Festival of New Music in Darmstadt (1989), "Warsaw Autumn" (1990), List-Glenn Festival at California State University in Los Angeles, CA (1990, 1999), Chopin Festival in Hawaii (1993), Mid-West Society of Composers Conference in Edmond, OK (1993), Potomac River Piano Festival in Great Falls, VA (VA, 1999), the International Chopin Piano Festival for Young Pianists in Wrocław (2000), Szymanowski Festival in Beijing (2011) and "Interfest Bitola" in Macedonia (2013).
He frequently performs a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, South America, China, and throughout the United States. As a soloist, he performed in Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Macedonia, France, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and throughout the United States. Dobrzański was a member of the "Atma" Piano Trio, with Blanka Bednarz (violin) and Cheung Chao (cello). The ensemble, created in 2001, regularly performed in Europe, Asia and the US.
Dobrzański has recorded solo and chamber music by Witold Lutosławski, Karol Szymanowski, Fryderyk Chopin, Stefan Kisielewski, Artur Malawski (complete piano solo music), Feliks Rybicki, Carl Tausig, and Johannes Brahms for Polish Radio and Television in Warsaw, Poland. Under the London based Acte Préalable label, Dobrzański has released several critically acclaimed CD albums of previously unknown piano repertoire by Maria Szymanowska (complete piano music), Antoine de Kontski, and Wiktor Labunski (complete piano music). He is the author of the first English language biography of the acclaimed 19th century pianist and composer Maria Szymanowska, published in 2006 by the Figueroa Press and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Dobrzański was a member of music faculties at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota and the University of Rhode Island. Currently he is Professor of Music in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at Kansas State University, where he teaches piano performance, chamber music and piano literature. Between 2009 and 2013, he served as the Chair of Keyboard Studies at Kansas State University.
As a guest teacher, Dobrzański lectured and conducted masterclasses at national conservatories in Peru, Paraguay, Slovakia, and Singapore, as well as at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Universidad de Cuenca in Ecuador, Hong Kong Baptist University, Aletheia University and National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre in Brazil, and at Keimyung University in South Korea. He collaborates with the International Piano Performance Examination Committee in Taichung, Taiwan.
He is the founder and former artistic director of the Chopin Society of Connecticut, which he established in 1999. For his contributions to Polish and Polish-American culture, in 2016 the pianist was honored by the Government of the Republic of Poland with the title "Meritorious for Polish Culture".
updated: 2013 (ai), 2020 (ac)
Artist's website: www.dobrzanski.weebly.com
