He was born on 23rd of October 1953 in Kraków. Chołoniewski studied music theory and composition with Bogusław Schaeffer, electronic music with Józef Patkowski as well as the organ with Leszek Werner at the Academy of Music in Kraków. He is now a lecturer at the Department of Composition of his alma mater. In 2011, he received a title of associate professor of musical arts. Since 1976, he has also been working in the Electroacoustic Music Studio in the same academy and since 2000, he has been acting as a director of this institution. Since 2012, he has been the director of the Audiosphere Lab of the Intermedia Department at Kraków’s Fine Arts Academy.
In 1977, Chołoniewski founded the 'Music Centre' Art Society which organised over 700 concerts. Since 1979, he has been a member of the 'Kraków Group'. He also founded the MCH Studio and co-founded many ensembles such as the 'Freight Train' Music Group (with Krzysztof Knittel and Piotr Bikont in 1986) and the Ch&K Studio (also with Krzysztof Knittel), CH&K&K group (with Knittel and Włodzimierz Kiniorski), mc2 duo (with Marcel Chyrzyński), Double Mark (with Marek Polishook), Infinity Quartet (with Keir Neuringer, Ryan Zawel, Rafał Mazur), Natural Plastic (with Amy Knoles), Kinetic Trio (with Kiniorski and Mazur), and dizzy kinetics (with Łukasz Szałankiewicz) – all of which give live concerts and record albums. Since 2012, he has been a member of GrupLab, a research collective which works at the Electroacoustic Music Studio of the Academy of Music in Kraków. The group has no permanent members and develops alternative artistic and research concepts, focusing mostly on free improvisation. Since March 2015, GrupLab has been recording a series of free improvisation pieces entitled Plejrek, available on the Electroacoustic Music Studio’s website.
Marek Chołoniewski writes instrumental and electroacoustic music as well as music for radio, television and film. He is the author of sound and video installations, and audiovisual, outdoor and network projects. Since 1984, he has given concerts, workshops and lectures in Europe, the Americas, and in Asia.
He is a founder, artistic director, collaborator and coordinator of many international artistic projects, such as series of Audio Art (1987), Audio Art Festival (1993), International Workshop for Contemporary Music Kraków / Stuttgart (with Matthias Hermann, 1993), the Internationale Akademie für Neue Komposition und Audio Art in Tyrol (with Marianne Penz van Stappershoef in 1993-99), Silent Films with Live Music (1994), GlobalMix (1998), Art Boat ( 2000), GPS-Art (2000), Ensemble Spiel (with Stephan Meier and Musik für heute, Hanover, 2003), Bridges and European Modern Orchestra (with Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, 2003-2007), Polish Society for Electroacoustic Music (Poland section CIME / ICEM, 2005), Polish Sound Art in China, Chinese Sound Art in Poland, Polish Sound Art in Tibet (with Dickson Dee and Zenial 2006-2008), PAFME (with Ben Boretzem and Dorota Czerner, 2006), the European Course for Musical Composition and Technologies (with IRCAM, 2006-2008), and Polish Culture Days in Luxembourg (with Marcin Wierzbicki, 2008).
In 2006, Marek Chołoniewski received the Honorary Award of the Association of Polish Composers, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Award, and the Independent Project Grant from the CECArtsLink Foundation, based in New York. From 2008, he served as secretary, and since 2011 as president, of the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music (CIME / ICEM).
Marek Chołoniewski is an ever-exploring artist. It wasn't for nothing that he studied composition with the Polish guru of new music, Bogusław Schaeffer, and it wasn't by chance that Krzysztof Knittel is one of his closest friends out of many other artists. With the latter, Chołoniewski collaborated on many projects dealing with all sorts of music, including the spectacular Pociąg Towarowy (Freight Train) - a kind of recurrent and constantly transforming artistic performance. This area of contemporary music seems to be highly valued by Chołoniewski just as much as audio-visual compositions and electroacoustic music, which he has been creating from 1976 at the Electroacoustic Music Studio of the Academy of Music in Kraków.