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Mariusz Smolij

The Polish conductor Mariusz Smolij has been active over a wider geographical area than many of his contemporaries, having ascended the podium in front of more than 100 orchestras in 27 countries on five continents. Unlike most Eastern European conductors, Smolij has become a familiar figure in the U.S., both as a musician and an educator. He has introduced both Polish music in the U.S. and American music in Poland. Smolij was born May 1, 1962 in Siemianowice Śląskie, Poland, near Katowice. His training took place in both Poland and the U.S., where he earned a doctoral degree in conducting from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Named one of the most promising young conductors by the American Symphony Orchestra League, Smolij began to find opportunities in both America and at home, where he conducted pioneering performances of American music with the Polish Radio Orchestra in 1996 (the concert was broadcast in Poland and elsewhere around Eastern Europe), and at the Hall of the National Theater in Warsaw in 2001. He taught conducting and directed the school's chamber orchestra at Northwestern University in Illinois from 1996 to 2000, becoming the youngest full-time conducting teacher at a major American conservatory. While he was there, he organized the Polish Music Festival in Chicago, said to be the largest presentation of Polish music outside Poland since Smolij started it in 1998. These efforts touched off an impressive string of guest-conducting appearances for him around North America, including at Symphony Nova Scotia, the New Orleans Philharmonic, the St. Louis Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, and the Chicago Lyric Opera. Since the mid-2000s, Smolij has served for more than a decade as music director at both the Riverside Symphonia in New Jersey and the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra in Lafayette, Louisiana. He has also conducted ensembles in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Israel, and South Africa. After releasing an album of American music with the Sinfonia Varsovia on Accord in 2002, Smolij has recorded for Naxos, beginning with a recording devoted to the Polish-British composer Roxanna Panufnik with the Polish Chamber Orchestra in 2006, and often features little-known Eastern European composers. In 2018 he led the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV in a program of music by Hungarian composer Eugene Zádor.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Discography

14 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

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