Szymon Bywalec - conductor
Polish conductor. He studied conducting with Jan Wincenty Hawel at the Academy of Music in Katowice, where he currently teaches. Between 2006 and 2013, he was artistic director of the Karol Szymanowski Academic Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. He is also a graduate of the Music Academy in Cracow, where he studied the oboe with Jerzy Kotyczka. He has collaborated with conductors of renown, including Krzysztof Penderecki, Gabriel Chmura, Takuo Yuasa, Arturo Tamayo, Paul McCreesh and Pierre Boulez. On a scholarship to Siena's Accademia Musicale Chigiana, he has perfected his métier in the class of Gianluigi Gelmetti (2001) and Lothar Zagrosek (2002, diploma with honours). Bywalec is the holder of numerous awards from at home and abroad. Currently he is conductor of the OMN New Music Orchestra, which he has directed at various modern music festivals including Warsaw Autumn, Wrocław's Musica Polonica Nova and Musica Electronica Nova, Poznań Music Spring, Bratislava's Melos-Ethos, Lviv's Velvet Curtain 2, Paweł Szymański Festival in Warsaw, Beijing Modern, and the Hindsgavl Festival in Denmark. The ensemble has presented many premieres of contemporary music and has recorded a number of CDs with domestic and foreign publishing houses. Bywalec's CD with cellist Jakob Kullberg, featuring the cello concertos by Nordic composers (Nørgård, Nordheim, and Saariaho) won the Danish Radio's Lyt til Nyt Prize in 2013. In 2016, a CD with clarinettist Michelle Marelli was published by Decca. Bywalec collaborates with many other ensembles as guest conductor. From 2011 he has sat on the programme committee of Warsaw Autumn Festival, and became director of the Musica Polonica Nova festival in 2013 – 2016.