Tomasz Praszczałek

born in 1981, he is currently a student of composition in the class of Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil at the Academy of Music in Poznań. He spent the summer semester of the 2002/2003 academic year in Cologne on a ‘Socrates/Erasmus’ grant, studying composition with York Höller and piano with Klaus Odemeyer. He received an honourable mention at the 3rd International Composers’ Competition in St Petersburg (2002) for the chamber opera Estjer to a libretto by Nikolay Gol. His honours also include the special prize for composition and the Sergey Slonimsky Award at the 1st St Petersburg Competition (2000), an honourable mention at the Tadeusz Baird National Composers’ Competition (2000, for Sator) and Third Prize at the National Student Competition for a Fugue in Bydgoszcz (2002). Over the past few years his works have been per-
formed at several festivals, including the ‘Warsaw Autumn’, ‘Musica Polonica Nova’ in Wrocław and the ‘Poznań Musical Spring’.
In 2003 he received a music critic’s grant from the German Music Council and the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung as well as the Award from the Mayor of Poznań.
Thanks to a grant from the Minister of Cuture, he took part in a project to mark the 75th birthday of Karlheinz Stockhausen, performing the electronium part in Prozession.
This year he received the ‘Primus Inter Pares’ and the ‘Primus Ekspert Artysta’ Awards.

Selected works: Agnus Dei for ten performers (1999/2000), Sator for soprano solo and ecologically recycled materials (2000), Lux aeterna for four male voices (2001), Pranajama for wind instruments and percussion (2001), 3 Poems for mezzo-soprano and piano (2001), Im Augenblick for clarinet and viola (2002), Recordare for eight voices (2002), Flash for two flutes and piano (2002), Estjer, opera to a libretto by Nikolay Gol (2002), Im Augenblick for clarinet and viola (2002), Mother Nature, Come to Daddy for clarinet, double bass, percussion and tape (2003), Lieber Felix for reciter and piano (2004).

Mother Nature is based on the same sound material as Mother Nature. Come to Daddy written for the French group Ensemble New Flore. The piece is a hymn of death, a hymn to the cruel world in which anything can be interrupted by a single simple gesture.

Tomasz Praszczałek