Andrzej Szadejko

composer, conductor, organist, organiser of musical life.

He studied organ at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk under Prof. Leon Bator, graduated with honours from the Academy of Music in Warsaw in the organ class of Prof. Joachim Grubich and from the Hochschule für Alte Musik Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in the organ class of Jean-Claude Zehnder.

At the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, he also completed with distinction his singing training in the class of Richard Levitt and the composition course with Rudolf Lutz.

He is a finalist and laureate of organ competitions in Rumia, Gdańsk, Warsaw, Odense/DK and Brugge/B.

In 2002 he defended his doctoral thesis at the Academy of Music in Łódź, and in 2012 he was awarded the academic title of Doctor of Musical Arts at the Academy of Music in Poznań. In 2021, he was awarded the title of professor of musical arts.

He has received scholarships from the City of Basel (Switzerland), Rapps-Stiftung (Switzerland), Doms-Stiftung (Switzerland), Organ Summer Academy in Haarlem (Netherlands), the Institute of Music and Dance, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk, the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodship, and the Culture Foundation.

Since 1994, he has given regular concerts in Poland, Europe and also in the USA (he has performed over 600 concerts) as a soloist, chamber musician and conductor. In addition to his concert activities with the organ, he is also involved in composing. In 2011, the music publishing house Polihymnia published an edition of his Missa Brevis for 8-voice a’cappella choir as part of the Pomeranian Voivodeship Marshal’s Scholarship for Young Creators, and in 2018/2019 four collections of organ compositions in the publishing house of the Music Academy in Gdańsk. He is the author of numerous solo and chamber organ compositions premiered in Poland, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, USA, UK, Norway, Russia.

He is currently a professor in the Department of Church Music at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk, where he teaches organ playing and basso continuo performance. He has given lectures and courses in organ music interpretation in Poland, as well as at the Faculty of Music of the Technical University in Oulu, Finland, the Department of Musicology of the University of Greifswald, and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA, the Academy of Music in Vilnius.

He is the author of organological reconstruction concepts and supervised the reconstruction of historical organs, e.g. Merten Friese (1618) in the Franciscan Church of the Holy Trinity in Gdańsk, Johann Rohde (1760) in St. John’s Church in Gdańsk, Eduard Wittek (1911) in the Salesian Church of St. John Bosco in Gdańsk-Orunia, and in the Franciscan Church in Vilnius. He is a consultant for many organ projects throughout Poland and abroad (Lithuania, Belgium). He is curator of the organ at the St John’s Centre in Gdańsk.

He cooperates with the Gdansk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences as a coordinator of the project Musical Heritage of the City of Gdansk in preparing recordings and prints of Gdansk music.

He is the leader and founder of the vocal and instrumental ensemble GOLDBERG BAROQUE ENSEMBLE (www.goldbergensemble.eu ), with which he records premiere performances of Gdansk cantatas by 18th century composers.

As a soloist and conductor, he has 30 recordings to his credit for Polish (Sarton, Dux, Acte Prealable, Ars Sonora) and German ( Motette-Psallite, MDG) labels. Discs from the series “Musical Heritage of the City of Gdańsk. Gdańsk Cantata Kingdom” have been nominated for the FRYDERYK and SZTORM awards several times.

He is currently the artistic head of the MUSICA BALTICA and GDAŃSK ORGAN LANDSCAPE series on the renowned German label MDG, whose individual releases are repeatedly nominated for the FRYDERYK and OPUS KLASSIK awards. In 2022, he received the OPUS KLASSIK award in the Best World Premiere category for the album MUSICA BALTICA 9. Johann Daniel Pucklitz – Oratorio Secondo.

In 2011 the Publishing House of the Academy of Music in Gdańsk published a book devoted to the works of two disciples of Johann Sebastian Bach, active on the Baltic Sea: “Style and Interpretation in Organ Works by Friedrich Christian Mohrheim (1719?-1780) and Johann Gottfried Müthel (1728-1788). Performance and stylistic issues of organ music in the South Baltic region in the eighteenth century”. In 2015, as part of the ‘Musical White Spots’ programme at the Institute of Music and Dance, he completed a research study on a manuscript with 517 fugues by the Danzig organist Daniel Magnus Gronau, which formed the basis for the publication of a textbook on basso continuo, counterpoint, improvisation and composition and a transcription of the manuscript in Polish in 2017, as well as in an English-German version in 2016. He is the main author of a monograph on the organ in the Franciscan Church of the Holy Trinity in Gdansk published in 2018.

Author of the programme Organy Nieograne in Programme 2 of the Polish Radio.

Organiser and author of many artistic formats and festivals: Festival of Young Vocalists and Organists in Bydgoszcz, Festival ORGANY PLUS+ in Gdańsk, series of Concerts for Gdańsk inhabitants, happenings for children Let’s Sing Together, art competition “…and the organs played”, Pomerania 2008 – international meetings of organ builders, GdO Tagung 2018 – International Organ Lovers Rally, festival “Moniuszko in the Churches of Warsaw”, MONIUSZKO_150 VILNIUS-BERLIN.

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