Bywalec Szymon
was born in 1974 in Tychy. He graduated with honours from the Music Academy in Katowice where he studied symphony and opera conducting with Jan Wincenty Hawel and where he now works as a lecturer. He is also a graduate of the Music Academy in Cracow in the oboe class of Jerzy Kotyczka. On a scholarship from Siena’s Accademia Musicale Chigiana, he perfected his conducting skills at masterclasses given by Gianluigi Gelmetti (2001) and Lothar Zagrosek (2002, Diploma di Merito). He has also participated in conducting masterclasses led by Gabriel Chmura, Kurt Mazur, Zoltán Peskó and Pierre Boulez.
He won the 1st Prize at the National Young Conductors’ Review in Białystok (1998), as well as two special prizes (Zofia and Antoni Wit Prize and the Mayor of Katowice Prize) at the International Grzegorz Fitelberg Conductors’ Competition in Katowice (1999). He has twice been the recipient of a scholarship of the Minister of Culture and Art, and on a number of occasions has been awarded the prize of the Mayor of the City of Katowice for outstanding artistic achievements.
He is the permanent conductor of the New Music Orchestra (OMN), which he has conducted at many festivals of contemporary music such as Warsaw Autumn, Musica Polonica Nova and Musica Electronica Nova in Wrocław, Poznań Music Spring, MelosEthos in Bratislava, Velvet Curtain in Lviv, Silesian Contemporary Music Days in Katowice, Paweł Szymański Festival in Warsaw and Beijing Modern. During the 2005 Warsaw Autumn he cooperated with IRCAM on the performance of Boulez’s Répons.
He has many world and Polish premieres to his credit. He has conducted renowned orchestras such as the Romanian National Radio, Miskolc Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato, Orchestra Filarmonica Europea, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Melos-Ethos Ensemble, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Currently he is the director of the Academic Symphony Orchestra in Katowice and also conducts the Karol Szymanowski Youth Symphony Orchestra. He often appears as a guest conductor with several orchestras in Poland and abroad. His interest in ancient music led him to found the Cantus Floridus ensemble with which he explores vocal and vocal-instrumental repertoire.
