Born in Ukraine in 1968, she completed a secondary music school in Lviv in 1986, in the class of piano and musicology. She subsequently studied composition at the city’s M. Lysenko Music Academy, gaining her diploma in 1991. After a traineeship as an assistant to M. Skoryk, she became a faculty member of the Academy’s Department of Composition as a lecturer. She held grants from the Warsaw Autumn Friends’ Foundation and the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung (2001) and the ‘Gaude Polonia’ Programme of the Polish Ministry of Culture (2004, for compositional studies with Zbigniew Bujarski).
She is a member of the New Music Association. Her compositions have been performed at international festivals in Poland and abroad, including ‘Contrasts’ in Lviv, the Kyiv-Music-Fest, ‘Premieres of the Season’ in Kiev, ‘Two Days and Two Nights’ (the new music festival in Odessa), ‘Days of Ukrainian Music’ in Warsaw and Moscow, ‘Days of Music by Kraków Composers’ and ‘At Cultural Crossroads’ in Kraków.

Selected works: the symphony Orbis Terrarum (1998), Forests Floating in the Air for clarinet, cello, piano, mixed choir and string orchestra (2002), Vestigia for violin, viola and string orchestra (2003), Kyrie eleison for mixed choir and string orchestra (2004), Concerto for Clarinet and Symphony Orchestra (2004–05).

The piece Why should I, like a tim’rous bird, to distant mountains fly? (according to the Book of Psalms, Ps. 10/11) was written in 2001. It was commissioned by the Warsaw Autumn Friends’ Foundation, with the financial support of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, and is dedicated to Andrzej Chłopecki.

Bohdana Frolyak