Born in Katowice on 1st February 1971, Mikołaj Górecki began learning the violin when he was six and later took up the piano as well. He graduated from the State Secondary Music School in Katowice in 1990 and went on to study composition at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice under his father, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. He graduated with honours in 1995 and in the course of the next two years was awarded two scholarships at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, where he further honed his skills as a composer. In 2000, he received his doctorate in composition from Indiana University in Bloomington, USA and he then lectured at McGill University in Montreal from 2000 to 2001. He currently lives and works in the USA (Laredo, Texas).
In 1988, he won the first prize at the 1st Bielsko-Biała Young Composers Competition for his Preludes for piano and, in 1994, he took third place at the 2nd Young Composers’ Forum in Krakow for his Sonata for clarinet and piano.
His compositions have been performed both in Poland and abroad, including the Lincoln Center and Avery Fisher Hall in New York; Montreal and Edmonton; the De IJsbreker Centre in Amsterdam; the ISCM World Music Days in Slovenia; the Festival of World Premieres in Katowice; and Musica Polonica Nova in Wrocław.
The musicians who have performed his work include Kaja Danczowska, Jadwiga Kotnowska, Agnieszka Duczmal, Gabriel Chmura, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra in New York.
More about composer: www.mikolajgorecki.pl
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