Zach, Barbara International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn

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From 2018 she studied composition with Janusz Stalmierski at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań, obtaining a BMus degree in 2021. She then took a master’s course in composition, electronic, film and theatre music with Ignacy Zalewski at Warsaw’s Fryderyk Chopin University of Music (MMus in composition, June 2024). 

She has composed music for five theatre productions directed by Marta Twardowska (including one awarded at the Forum of Young Directors in Cracow). She also collaborated with accordionists on an Fryderyk Chopin University of Music project that yielded a CD release (including her Refraction for accordion and multi-percussion). 

Her achievements include a special award in the 5th Piotr Perkowski National Competition for Composers (2021), reaching the finals of Saxophone and Electronics Composition Competition (2023; winners will be announced later this year in Budapest), participation in the International Synth Design Hackathon (building and programming one’s own instrument in a threestrong team over four days in February 2023), and Nuff Film Workshops in Tromsø (group composition of music for six shorts simultaneously created by the filmmakers’ teams, June 2023). At the 2023 Warsaw Autumn she presented her installation Oświeć mnie (Enlighten Me, with sound director Adam Czerski as part of the Rzeczy wspólne Common Things exhibition at the Czapski Palace in Warsaw) as well as her compositions Io (perf. Żaneta Rydzewska and Włodzimierz Żukowski, Warsaw Autumn fringe event at the Planetarium of the Copernicus Science Centre) and 3C 273 (perf. Przemysław Wojciechowski and Barbara Zach, at the Electrophonia concert). Her nonage was presented in Dolby Atmos system as part of the Sound Cinema concert (dir. Wiktor Skrzypczyński, January 2024). 

Apart from music for her own animated films, she created (in cooperation with Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts) a new soundtrack for the cartoon Laska Chick by Michał Socha. In late 2023 she co-founded (with Bartosz Mularski, Julia Marczuk, and Włodzimierz Żukowski) the Collectif4 foundation for the promotion of contemporary art. 

Selected works: Medusa for flute and piano (2018), Reflexion for vibraphone, 8-channel tape and animated film (2020), Refraction for accordion and multi-percussion (2020), Come Inside for three flutes and 3-channel tape (2020), Mothers for eight percussionists (2021), Scream of the Puppets for orchestra (2021), Discordia for four sopranos and orchestra (2021), Tunnelma for orchestra (2022), Mneme, concerto for clarinet and orchestra (2022), Animal Planet, a performance in three acts for voice, live electronics, tape and video (2022), C1965 for saxophone and tape (2023), 3C 273 for accordion, live electronics, tape and animated film (2023), Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard, performance for voice, accordion, live electronics, tape and video (2023), Where Am I? for accordion, tape and photographs (2023), Io for bass clarinet, cello, live electronics and tape (2023), nonage, Dolby Atmos electronic piece (2024), dyspnoea for string orchestra (2024), carbon dioxide for three voices, live electronics, tape and lights (2024), carbon dioxide 2.0 for three voices, live electronics, ensemble, tape and lights (2024); theatre and film music.