Blecharz, Wojtek

Born in Gdynia (Poland) in 1981. He graduated with honours from the F. Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw in 2006, before obtaining a PhD in music composition from the University of California in San Diego in 2015.

Since 2012 he has curated the Instalakcje music festival at Warsaw’s Nowy Theatre, featuring nonconcert music: sound installations, performance installations, sound sculptures, music videos, and music theatre. He has directed his own two opera-installations: Transcryptum (2013) commissioned by the Grand eater – National Opera in Warsaw and Park­Opera (2016) commissioned by the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw. His third opera-installation, Body, was commissioned by the Huddersfield Festival in 2016.

In 2012, he received a scholarship prize “for perfection in music composition” at the Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and in 2013 he was selected as one of winners of the IMPLUS International Composition Competition in Graz. He was nominated for the Passport Award of the Polish Polityka weekly (2012), PKN Orlen’s Poles with Verve Award (2013), and Polish Radio Channel 3 Culture Man of the Year (2013). In 2013 his opera Transcryptum was nominated to “cultural event of the year” by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. In 2015 a choral theatre piece with Blecharz’s music Mutter Courage und ihre Hunden, directed by Marta Górnicka, commissioned by the Brunswick City Theatre, was acclaimed as one of the best 60 performances in Germany. In 2016 he received a music theatre award for the Best Performance of Contemporary Play (Warsaw/Wałbrzych).

His latest works have been composed for Kwadrofonik Ensemble (Warsaw), Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra (Beijing), Klangforum Wien, Royal String Quartet (Warsaw), Aviva Endean (Melbourne), International Contemporary Ensemble (New York), and Musiques Nouvelles (Brussels). His works have been featured at festivals and venues such as Warsaw Autumn, Salzburg Biennale, Museum of Modern Art in Tel Aviv, Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), MATA (New York), Mostly Mozart (New York), Klangwerkstadt (Berlin), and many others. His latest installation Axis was commissioned by the Goethe Institute in Warsaw and Polish Institute in Berlin, while SOUNDWORK for eight actors was commissioned by TR Warszawa. A new work for Syrian and Western instruments Music for Invisible Places was commissioned by International Contemporary Ensemble to celebrate to 50th anniversary of Lincoln Center in New York. In October 2016, Wojtek Blecharz participated in Ari Benjamin Meyers’s 15-day installation at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, composing daily for four hours at the museum.

Selected works: Four Preludes for piano (1999–2003), Psalmus 82 per coro misto (2003–4), dim for voice, cello, accordion and piano (2006–7), Airlines for recorders, four performers (2007–8), Torpor for violin, bass clarinet, percussion and piano (2008), Hypopnea for detuned accordion (2010), ­onym for bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and live electronics (2011), Phe­ notype for prepared violin (2012), Means of Protection for voice, cello and prepared accordion (2012), K’an for steel drum and ca. 130 sticks (2012), Transcryptum, opera-installation for female voice, cello, alto flute, two percussions, two accordions and double bass clarinet (2011–13), DFRGMNTD (I ow) for two pianos and two percussions (2011), DFRGMNTD (I am) for two pianos and two percussions (2013), Small Talks for accordion reed box and baritone saxophone (2012–13), September. The Next Reading for voice, piano four hands and four percussions (2013–14), (one) [year](later) for voice, flute, erhu, pipa, guzheng, yang qin and percussion (2014), blacksnowfalls for timpani (2014), Liminal Stu­dies for string quartet (2014), ocean is not enough for 13 performers (2014), Counter­Earth for clarinet, voice and death whistle (one performer) (2015), no more stories for two utists and video (2015), A Bright, Empty Space for woodwind quintet and electronic sounds (2015), Audioroom, sound installation (2016), Axis for rhythm generators, analogue synthesizers and cello (2016), Park­Opera, opera-installation (2016), Soundwork for eight performers (2016), Body­Opera, opera-installation (2016–17), House of Sound, concert-installation (2017).