Founded in 1996, it is the oldest Polish ensemble specialising in contemporary music performance. Working first under the direction of the ensemble’s founder Aleksander Lasoń, and since 2006 under its artistic director Szymon Bywalec, the OMN has gradually morphed from a group of enthusiastic students into a professional ensemble capable of performing the most complex contemporary scores. Its members see it as their mission to seek out works important for musical culture and worthy of being prepared for public performance.

The ensemble continually hones its skills thanks to collaborations with leading Polish and international composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Mark Andre, Simon Steen-Andersen, Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Per Nørgård, and Bent Sørensen, as well as inviting excellent soloists, such as Jakob Kullberg, Ashot Sarkissjan, Marco Blaauw, Michelle Marelli, and conductors specialising in new music, including Daniel Kawka, François-Xavier Roth, Jean Deroyer, Christopher Austin, Steven Loy, Ivan Buffa, and Wojciech Michniewski. The OMN also frequently works with members of leading European new music ensembles as well as sound engineers from IRCAM, SWR Experimentalstudio, and Tempo Reale.

The OMN has given nearly 300 world premieres and first Polish performances of the greatest contemporary works. Each season it commissions several new pieces, holds their premieres and later revivals in other hubs of musical life. It regularly appears at major

Polish and foreign festivals and in key music venues. The ensemble has recorded several dozen titles, some of which have been released under such record labels as Anaklasis, Aurora, Decca, Dacapo Records, Dux, CD Accord, PWM, or as productions of the Polish Composers’ Union’s POLMIC centre. Many have been highly rated by critics in leading music magazines in Italy, France, Denmark, Great Britain, and the United States, garnering international accolades such as recommendations of the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris and Amsterdam as well as international music awards including P2 Danish Radio Prize, Pizzicato Supersonic Award, Carl Prizen, nomination sfor International Classical Music Awards (ICMA), Fryderyk Awards, and Classical:NEXT – Innovation.

The OMN has inspired and organised many varied artistic events, including festivals, concert cycles, educational and interdisciplinary projects involving dancers, soloists, and singers, presented outside concert halls with multimedia and modern technologies. The OMN also participates in international artistic and educational projects implemented jointly with leading European new music ensembles and institutions promoting contemporary music.

As an ambassador of Polish culture, the OMN cooperates with foreign partners on projects that present the achievements of the Polish school of composition in major centres abroad, including performances of Polish works in European Capitals of Culture (Tallinn, Wrocław, Mons) and events promoting Polish music held in Aarhus, Vienna, Prague, Oslo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Paris, Freiburg, and Bratislava. The OMN’s contemporary music concert series held since 2014 at the NOSPR venue in Katowice, which presents several different programmes every season, enjoys considerable popularity among the audience.