Born in Warsaw, Joanna Maluga is a conductor, choirmaster, academic teacher, and specialist in the Zoltán Kodály method.

She graduated from the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. She pursued postgraduate studies at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Hungary and further developed her conducting skills at masterclasses in Austria, Ireland, Slovenia, Croatia, and Poland. She received her doctoral degree in musical arts in 2013 and completed her habilitation in 2019.

She teaches at the Chopin University of Music, where she leads a choral conducting class. She specialises in world premieres of contemporary choral and vocal-instrumental music. Over the past eighteen years, she has conducted the premieres of more than thirty works by Polish and international composers. Together with the ensembles under her direction, she has won nearly forty awards at national and international competitions.

Maluga has served as an expert appointed by the Polish Minister of Education and Science for the evaluation of research activity conducted by the Science Evaluation Committee. She acts as a reviewer in habilitation proceedings and supervises master’s and bachelor’s theses. She is the author of a monograph and numerous scholarly articles. She is regularly invited to speak at conferences, serve on competition juries, and teach masterclasses.

She has appeared at numerous festivals, including the Warsaw Autumn, Warsaw Music Encounters, the KODY Festival of Traditional and Avant-Garde Music in Lublin, the Łódź of Four Cultures Festival, the New Epiphanies Festival in Warsaw, the St John’s Festival Concerts in Toruń, named after Marian Dorawa, the Lenten Singing Festival in Lublin, and the Festival of Three Cultures in Włodawa.

She has performed at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest, Philharmonie Haarlem in the Netherlands, the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio of Polish Radio, the Sinfonia Varsovia Concert Hall, the Royal Castle in Warsaw, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the National Audiovisual Institute, and the National Museum in Warsaw, among other venues.

She has participated in three film productions and recorded four albums. She regularly collaborates with the National Forum of Music in Wrocław and the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre Warsaw, conducting workshops and educational projects.

She is artistic director and principal conductor of the renowned Warsaw-based VRC Choir (Varsoviae Regii Cantores). She also works as choir conductor and vocal consultant at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.

Maluga has received individual scholarships from the Hungarian Scholarship Board, the International Kodály Society, the Balassi Institute, and the Foundation for the Kodály Institute. Together with the VRC Choir, she has also received a number of collective grants and awards, including two scholarships from the Fund for the Promotion of Creativity, two grants under the Minister of Culture’s Composing Commissions programme, and the Annual Award of the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the field of music.