Blecharz, Wojtek

Born in 1981, he graduated with honours from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw in 2005 and gained his PhD in composition from the music faculty of the University of California in San Diego in 2015, specialising in the composition and performance of contemporary music. Since 2012, together with Paweł Mykietyn, he has curated the Installactions music festival at the Nowy Theatre in Warsaw. 

He has directed his own three opera–installations: Transcryptum (2013), commissioned by the National Opera in Warsaw, Park-Opera (2016), commissioned by the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw, and Body-Opera (2014–16), commissioned by the Nowy Theatre and Huddersfield Festival. April 2018 saw the premiere of his fourth opera, FIASKO, directed by K.A.U & Wdowik at the State Theatre in Darmstadt. 

In 2012 he won a grant for “excellence in composition” at the Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and in 2013 he won an award from the IMPULS composition competition in Austria. He has been nominated for the Passport Award of Polish weekly Polityka in the classical music category (2012), PKN Orlen’s Poles with Verve award in the culture and arts category (2013), and Polish Radio’s Cultural Figure of the Year award (2013). In 2013, Transcryptum was nominated in the Event of the Year and Place of the Year categories by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. Marta Górnicka’s stage work Mutter Courage und ihre Hunde, with Blecharz’s music, commissioned by the State Theatre in Braunschweig, was acclaimed as one of the most important theatre shows of 2015 in Germany. In 2016, Blecharz received a music theatre award for Best Production of a Contemporary Play for Schubert: A Romantic Composition for 12 Performers and String Quartet, directed by Magda Szpecht. In 2017, he received an Ernst von Siemens Foundation Grant to compose the work other states_horizon for 16 performers and 16 wireless speakers for Zurich’s Collegium Novum. 

He has recently written works for the Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra (Beijing), International Contemporary Ensemble (New York), Musiques Nouvelles (Brussels), KNM Ensemble (Berlin), Kwadrofonik, Klangforum Wien, Royal String Quartet, Flute O’Clock, LutosAir, and other leading ensembles. In 2016 Blecharz wrote and directed SOUNDWORK for eight actors, commissioned by TR Warszawa, and in 2017 he created the concert installation House of Sound, commissioned by the Słowacki Theatre in Cracow, and the installation Axis for rhythm generators, analogue synthesizers and cello, commissioned by the Goethe Institute in Warsaw and the Polish Institute in Berlin. Blecharz’s music has recently been featured at the MATA Festival, Salzburg Biennale, Klangwerkstadt, Bendigo Festival of Exploratory Music, Mostly Mozart, Huddersfield Festival, and Rainy Days, among others. In October 2016, he took part in an installation created by Ari Benjamin Meyers, in which he composed music live for 15 days at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin. 

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), Torporfor 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), Phenotype 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 contrabass 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), blacksnowfallsfor 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), Park-Opera, opera–installation (2016), Soundwork for eight performers (2016), Body-Opera, opera–installation (2016–17), House of Sound, concert–installation (2017), RECHNITZ. OPERA, performance version of the opera for five actors and celloftensemble after Elfriede Jelinek’s play Rechnitz (The Exterminating Angel) (2018).