MARIA POMIANOWSKA

Maria Pomianowska is a Professor of Musical Arts, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, and educator. She serves as a professor at the Academy of Music in Kraków and is the artistic director of the international Crossroads of Cultures Festival.

Twenty-eight years ago, together with Ewa Dahlig and Andrzej Kuczkowski, she led the reconstruction of several lost historical Polish bowed string instruments, including the suka biłgorajska, fidel płocka, and suka mielecka. In 2010, she established Poland's first university specialization dedicated to ethnic music, "Knee Fiddles", at the Department of Cello and Double Bass of the Academy of Music in Kraków, offering both undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

Maria Pomianowska has released 29 original albums, many of which have received prestigious Polish and international distinctions, including recognition from World Music Charts Europe and Songlines magazine. For more than three decades, she has performed as a soloist around the world in renowned concert venues such as Royal Albert Hall (London), The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, D.C.), Lincoln Center (New York), Izumi Hall (Osaka), Mozart Hall (Tokyo), and Kitara Hall (Sapporo).

She has composed and performed alongside internationally acclaimed artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Janusz Olejniczak, Gil Goldstein, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Branford Marsalis, Kayhan Kalhor, and Hossein Alizadeh.

Between 1997 and 2002, while living in Japan as the spouse of the Polish Ambassador, she developed a close relationship with the Japanese Imperial Family, performing concerts and composing music for Her Majesty Empress Michiko.

Since 2011, she has created unique intercultural projects with musicians from the Arab world, Pakistan, Senegal, Iran, Korea, China, Japan, and India, combining the folk music traditions of the Mazovia region with diverse musical cultures across Asia and Africa. Through the partnership between the Academy of Music in Kraków and Quanzhou Normal University in China, she also promotes Polish music internationally by leading annual collaborative projects with Chinese students.

In 2014, together with Ewa Dahlig, she published Knee Fiddles: (Re)Construction, a landmark study on the reconstruction of historical Polish bowed instruments. In 2020, she published the first-ever instructional method for playing these reconstructed instruments. She also composes music for theatre productions and films.

Among her most significant honors are the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (2010), the Mazovian Voivodeship Marshal's Award (2011), the Silver Cross of Merit awarded by the President of Poland (2011), the Lublin Voivodeship Marshal's Award (2016), the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Award for Music (2018), the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (2019), the Witold Hulewicz Award (2019), and the Polish Public Media Award for Music, presented by Polish Radio (2023).

She co-created the soundtrack for the internationally acclaimed animated feature The Peasants, for which she received a Platinum Record and the Fryderyk Award for Film Music Album of the Year.

artist website:

www.pomianowska.art.pl

YouTube videos:

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