Monowid, Jan Jakub

Counter-tenor. He studied with Jerzy Artysz at Warsaw’s Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy. He began his concert career while still a student, in performances of works by Bach, Pergolesi, Handel, Liszt, and Britten. He has performed early and contemporary music at the Warsaw, Lublin, Bydgoszcz, Białystok, and Poznań philharmonics (notably with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra) as well as the Zurich Tonhalle.

He made his operatic debut in 2004 as Ottone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Warsaw Chamber Opera, where he began to perform after his studies. He has sung the title role in Handel’s Orlando, Goffredo in Rinaldo, and Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare; Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Ramiro in La finta giardiniera, Farnace in Mitridate, re di Ponto; Rossini’s Tancredi; as well as in contemporary stage works including Zygmunt Krauze’s Polyeuct, Edward Pałłasz’s I, Cain, and Dariusz Przybylski’s Orphée. He has also appeared at the Operetta Mazovian Music Theatre (as Prince Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus), Białystok Opera, and Gdańsk Opera. As a soloist of the International Opera Studio in Zurich he interpreted the part of Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer's Night Dream.

He has taken part in unique recording projects dedicated to Polish baroque music: the complete works of Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki and Stanisław Sylwester Szarzyński (published by the Pro Musica Camerata foundation) as well as the live recording of Warsaw Chamber Opera’s production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare (2008). He has also recorded contemporary music including Marc-André Dalbavie’s Sonnets, Giya Kancheli’s And Farewell Goes Out Sighing, and Zbigniew Penherski’s Breviary. Jan Jakub Monowid is the winner of the Jan Kiepura Theatre Music Award and 2nd prize at Gianni Bergamo Classical Music Award.