Pawel Lukaszewski

The Polish composer Pawel Lukaszewski has devised a contemporary development of Eastern European holy minimalism, winning wide appreciation for his choral music in Britain and the U.S. as well as in his home country. Lukaszewski was born in Czestochowa on September 19, 1968. His father was a composer, and his brother Marcin Lukaszewski, also became one. Lukaszewski studied at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, with concentrations in cello and composition; in the latter field his teacher was Martin Borkowski. A notable feature of his education was that he combined arts management courses with those in composition, and he was active for some years as an impresario. He earned a degree in arts management from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and went on for a choral conducting degree at a choirmasters' school in Bydgoszcz. Lukaszewski assumed the directorship of the Musica Sacra choir at Praga Cathedral in Warsaw in 2002, and he has served in executive capacities for several music festivals and composers' organizations, some of which specialize in musical idioms far from his own tonally organized one. Lukaszewski has taught composition at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw since 1996, becoming associate professor there in 2001. He has won five Fryderyk awards, given by Poland's music industry. In addition to performances at more than 100 festivals in Poland alone, Lukaszewski has found a large audience for his music in Britain. Some of his earlier music involved tapes and computer sound synthesis, but beginning with such works as the Two Lenten Motets for choir a cappella (1995) he increasingly focused on sacred choral music. Although his music has elements of tonality, it "is primarily founded," in the words of Paul Wingfield, "on the non-functional progression between distantly connected triads and chords with added sixths, sevenths and/or ninths, in addition to more exotic sonorities constructed, for example, from pairs of interlocking perfect fifths. This "extended" tonal sound world is enriched by highly selective use of vocal effects such as glissandi, parlando (speaking), and susurrando (whispering), all of which occur invariably in direct response to clear textual stimuli." Indeed, Lukaszewski's music, unlike that of the minimalists, involves strong and specific responses to text. The Via Crucis for tenor, baritone, mixed choir, and orchestra attracted a performance by the British choir Polyphony under Stephen Layton, and numerous short choral pieces have had performances worldwide. A 2017 album of Lukaszewski's Motets by the Polski Chór Kameralny collected some of the composer's strongest works in the form.
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