Aleksandra Rupocińska

Graduated from the Music Academy in Wroc1aw where she studied with Marta Czarny-Kaczmarska and the Royal Conservatory in Brussels where she studied harpsichord and chamber music with Herman Stinders. In addition to early music, which is her main interest, she performs contemporary music. She has developed a fine career as
a soloist and in chamber ensembles. She has taken part in the international early music festivals in Warsaw (the Royal Castle), Stary Sacz and Kraków, as well as in OWratislavia Cantans1, OMusica Polonica Nova1 and the Days of Kraków Composers. Foreign tours have taken her to Germany, Belgium, Holland, France and Portugal.

The new music orchestra was founded in 1996 from among the students of the Karol Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice, on the initiative of the composer and conductor Aleksander LasoY. Its principal goal is the promotion of new music and the classical works of the 20th-century repertoire. The Orchestra is now made of up of members of the OAkademos1 Quartet, the Silesian Quartet, as well as of graduates and members of staff of the Academy. Despite its name and size numbering around twenty performers, the New Music Orchestra is in fact a chamber ensemble, which specializes in the performance of modern scores which require one player per part. The members of the ensemble perform in various instrumental configurations, under the leadership of their music director Aleksander LasoY, and Szymon Bywalec. It has to its credit many first performances of works by foreign and Polish composers, some of which have been written for or dedicated to the Orchestra. The repertoire of the ensemble also includes music of earlier periods.
Since 1999 the New Music Orchestra has performed at the OWarsaw Autumn1 Festival. It is also invited regularly to such festivals as the Silesian Days of Contemporary Music, the International Days of Music by Kraków Composers, ONew Music Marathon1 in Prague and OMelos-Ethos1 in Bratislava. Since 2001, the Orchestra has hosted the New Music Festival in Bytom. Thanks to a grant from the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, it has participated (since 2002) in the project OFörderpreise für Polen1 aimed at the promotion of the young generation of Polish and foreign composers; earlier this year, under the aegis of the Silesian Music Society, it launched the cycle OAlchemy of New Music1.
The New Music Orchestra has made numerous recordings of pieces by contemporary composers. These include Zbigniew Bargielski1s Slapstick and Jerzy Kornowicz1s Interwoven Figures (for Polish Radio 2). The latter work, dedicated to the orchestra and Aleksander LasoY, was a selected composition at the 2000 unesco International Composers1 Rostrum in Amsterdam. Live recordings from the OWarsaw Autumn1 Festivals featured in the sound chronicle of the event occupy an important place in the Orchestra1s discography.
The Orchestra1s debut cd,
a joint production of pwm Edition and dux, was released in June 2003. It features works by Boles1aw Szabelski, Henryk Miko1aj Górecki, Eugeniusz Knapik, Aleksander LasoY and Marcel ChyrzyYski.