Agnieszka Frankow-Zelazny

Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny, artistic director of the Polish National Youth Choir, is among Poland's leading choral conductors. She was for many years conductor of the NFM Choir in Wrocław and is also a prominent educator. Franków-Żelazny was born in Głubczyce, Poland, on March 24, 1976. She attended the State Primary Music School in Głubczyce, studying piano and flute there, and the State Secondary Music School in Wrocław, studying flute. At the latter school, she sang in a choir, but her turn toward conducting came while she was a member, from 1993 to 1999, of In terra pax, a choral academy that includes members from Poland, Germany, and France. Franków-Żelazny began as a chorister and later became a section coach, getting the chance to observe various international choral conductors. She was also a member of the Academic Choir of the Wrocław University of Technology from 1996 to 2000 and was active there as a soloist, voice tutor, assistant conductor, and finally, conductor. Franków-Żelazny majored in biology at the University of Wrocław, graduating in 2000. By that time, she had already landed a job as a biology teacher at the School Complex No. 1 in Wrocław and started an ensemble of her own there, the Con Amore Youth Choir. In 2000, she also established the Kameralny Chór Akademii Medycznej ("Chamber Choir of the Medical University of Wrocław"); she remained director there until 2015. Thoroughly hooked on choral conducting, Franków-Żelazny rounded out her education in the early 2000s in classes, some of them at the Academy of Music in Wrocław, with Halina Bobrowicz and Ewa Czermak, and took a course in Postgraduate Choirmaster Studies in Bydgoszcz in 2006. That year, Franków-Żelazny became the director of the Philharmonic Choir of Wrocław, later renamed the Choir of the National Forum of Music (or NFM Choir). She remained in that post until 2021, leading the group to international awards and making several recordings, including Words Painted with Sounds in 2012. Franków-Żelazny has also served as guest conductor of groups both inside and outside Poland, including the Silesian Philharmonic Choir, Gabrieli Consort, and Bamberger Symphoniker Choir, appearing in major halls such as the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Royal Albert Hall in London (with the Wrocław Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms), and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany. She is the artistic director of the Polish National Youth Choir, which she founded in 2012, and she has continued to work with the NFM Choir, leading it on a 2023 recording of Bob Chilcott's Canticles of Light on the Signum Classics label.
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