dr Martyna Zakrzewska
Pianist—soloist and chamber musician—specialising in performance of contemporary music; Doctor of Fine Arts. She took her first piano lessons at the age of five, attending the first-level State Music School in Racibórz, and continued her education on the second level in Rybnik. In 2016 she obtained a master’s degree in the Academy of Music in Kraków, having studied with prof. Mariusz Sielski and prof. Milena Kędra. 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. In 2014 she also began studies in Neue Klavier Musik at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, first with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and with prof. David Smeyers, completed by 2017.
She was awarded special prize in the 2014 edition of the 20th– & 21st-Century Music Competition for Young Performers in Radziejowice, second prize in the 23rd 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.
She has performed at many festivals—including Acht Brücken, Warsaw Autumn, Kraków’s Sacrum Profanum, Audio Art, ELEMENTI, 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—Piotr Peszat, Camille van Lunen, Andrzej Kwieciński, Artur Zagajewski, Cezary Duchnowski, Joanna Woźny, Jarosław Płonka, Jacek Sotomski, and Marta Śniady.
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. When studying in Cologne, she gained experience in conducting and took up improvisation too, developing in these fields under prof. Paul Alvares.
In 2014 she cofounded the group known and performing to this day as Spółdzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble. Since 2018 she has also been working in a piano duo with Marlies Debacker. The year 2020 saw the premiere of her original project Feminine forms, focused on women’s performance of pieces by contemporary female composers.