Bonk, Adam

He graduated from the percussion class of Stanisław Proksa and Wojciech Herzyk at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. As a student, he won 1st and 2nd prizes in international competitions in Portugal, Italy, and Poland. As a member of the Academic Percussion Group he took part in masterclasses and concerts with artists such as Marta Klimasara, Tatiana Koleva, Svet Stoyanov, Ji Hye Jung, W. Lee Vinson, and Vassilena Serafimova. He participated in concert tours of the youth I’Culture Orchestra to Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ukraine, Georgia, Spain, and Poland (2015 and 2018). While preparing for those tours, he had the opportunity to work under the guidance of musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra. He has received scholarships from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage as well as the Vice-Chancellor of the Academy of Music in Katowice. 

For the last several years he has played the percussion in Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej, with which he has given concerts at major contemporary music festivals in Poland and abroad, as well as a concert series at the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. With the Orchestra he has also premiered and recorded numerous works by leading Polish and foreign composers. In 2018 he performed Per Nørgård’s concerto for two percussionists and chamber orchestra Bach To The Future with Wojciech Herzyk and Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej. 

Work with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Katowice has played a major role in his career, involving several dozen concerts and projects under the best conductors and with outstanding soloists. Equally frequently he is invited to play contemporary music at concerts and festivals with the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy. In 2018 at Cracow’s Sacrum Profanum festival he took part in the world premiere performance of Aleksander Nowak’s opera ahat ilī – Sister of Gods to a libretto by Olga Tokarczuk.