He graduated with honours in orchestra and opera conducting from Jan Wincenty Hawel’s class at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where he is currently deputy Dean of the Faculty of Composition, Conducting, Music Theory, and Music Education. In 2006–13 he was the artistic director of the Karol Szymanowski Academic Symphony Orchestra collaborating with such conductors as, among others, Gabriel Chmura, Takuo Yuasa, François-Xavier Roth, Arturo Tamayo, Jacek Kaspszyk, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Paul McCreesh. Bywalec also graduated from the Cracow Academy of Music, where he studied oboe with Jerzy Kotyczko. As a scholarship student at Siena’s Accademia Musicale Chigiana, he honed his conducting skills under Gianluigi Gelmetti (2001) and Lothar Zagrosek (2002). He participated in masterclasses taught by Gabriel Chmura, Kurt Masur, Zoltán Peskó, and Pierre Boulez, among others. His accolades include 1st Prize at the2nd National Review for Young Conductors in Białystok (1998), two special awards in the 6th Grzegorz Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors in Katowice (1999), scholarships from the Minister of Culture and Art, as well as the Honorary Award of the Polish Composers’ Union for his contributions to the promotion of Polish contemporary music (2014).

As artistic director and conductor of the OMN Ensemble, he also regularly works with the NOSPR Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. Bywalec has given more than 140 world premieres and first Polish performances of contemporary works, as well as making many awarded recordings for the radio and record labels. His recording of Paweł Szymański’s Three Songs to Words by Trakl received a recommendation at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris (June 2007), while Magdalena Długosz’s Gemisatos (with Sinfonia Varsovia) and Ewa Trębacz’s things lost things invisible (with the Academic Symphony Orchestra) performed under his baton received IRC recommendations in 2009. In January 2013 his CD of cello concertos by Scandinavian composers (Nørgård, Nordheim, and Saariaho, with cellist Jakob Kullberg) won the Danish Radio’s Lyt til Nyt Pris for 2012. The year 2016 saw the release of Decca’s CD recorded with the OMN and Italian clarinettist Michelle Marelli. Bywalec has been a member of the Warsaw Autumn Repertoire Committee since 2011, artistic director of the Musica Polonica Nova festival in 2013–16, organiser and conductor of the OMN’s concert series at NOSPR Katowice since 2014.He has conducted numerous philharmonic, radio and chamber orchestras in Poland and abroad. Recently (2023, 2024) he conducted the International Contemporary Music Courses at the Swiss Boswil/Lucerne and conducted the inaugural concert of the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music at Warsaw Philharmonic (2023).

Since 1999, he has been a faculty member of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where he currently teaches orchestra and opera conducting. In June 2024, he was awarded the title of Professor of Art. For promoting Polish contemporary music abroad, he received another Honorary Award of the Polish Composers’ Union in 2025.Particularly noteworthy is his promotion of contemporary Silesian music, which has been presented in his interpretations (mostly by the OMN) in China, France, Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark, among others.