Skweres, Tomasz

Born in 1984 in Warsaw, Polish composer and cellist residing in Vienna and Regensburg. He studied composition with Chaya Czernowin and Detlev Müller-Siemens as well as cello with Stefan Kropfitsch and Valentin Erben (of the Alban Berg Quartet) at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Orchestral compositions play a major role in his output. In recent years, Skweres has received commissions from the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Vienna, Regensburg Philharmonic, Lower Bavaria Philharmonic, and NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra in Wrocław. He has also been commissioned to write music for other famous institutions, festivals and ensembles such as Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Wien Modern festival, Warsaw Autumn, National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Musica Polonica Nova, LEO Festival in Wrocław, Apollon Musagète Quartet, Cantores Minores Wratislavienses Choir, Regensburg Theatre, as well as numerous contemporary music ensembles, including Wiener Collage, Zeitfluss, Platypus, and Reconsil. 

Tomasz Skweres is the winner of the International TONALi Composers’ Competition 2017 (Germany), International Composers’ Competition for the Franz Josef Reinl Prize (Austria), Ernst Křenek Composers’ Competition (Austria), as well as the competition for the obligatory piece to be performed in the International Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition (2007 and 2009). The President of the Austrian Republic presented him with the Theodor Körner Prize. He has also won prizes in international competitions for composers such as the Città di Udine (2016), New Vision, Chopin & Friends in New York, and the Deutsche Hochdruckliga Competition. He has received numerous scholarships, among others from the Austrian Ministry of Culture (2010, 2014), Herbert von Karajan Foundation, Czibulka Foundation, and Robert Thyll-Dürr Foundation. 

Skweres’s works are published by Doblinger in Vienna and Sikorski Music Publishers in Hamburg. Their performances have been broadcast notably by the Bavarian Radio, North German Radio, Österreich 1, Polish Radio Channel 2, RAI Südtirol, and ABC Classic. 

Since 2012 Skweres has played the solo cello in the Regensburg Philharmonic Orchestra. As a soloist and chamber musician, he mostly performs contemporary music. He has premiered numerous new works, for instance solo pieces by Mateusz Ryczek, Grzegorz Pieniek, and Jean-Patrick Besingrand, of which he was the dedicatee. 

Tomasz Skweres has taught cello at the High School of Music in Detmold and the Church Hich School of Music in Regensburg.