Bywalec graduated in symphonic/operatic conducting under Jan Wincenty Hawel at the Academy of Music in Katowice, and in oboe under Jerzy Kotyczka at the Academy of Music in Kraków. Bywalec continued his education in the masterclasses of Gianluigi Gelmetti (2001) and Lothar Zagrosek (2002 – Diploma di Merito) at Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, which awarded Bywalec a scholarship. He furthered his skills at courses for conductors led by Gabriel Chmura, Kurt Mazur, Zoltán Peskó and Pierre Boulez, amongst others.
Bywalec came first at the 2nd Polish Showcase of Young Composers in Białystok (1998) and won two non-statutory awards (of Mr. Antoni and Mrs. Zofia Wit, and of the President of the City of Katowice) at the 6th Grzegorz Fitelberg International Conductor’s Competition in Katowice (1999). He received two scholarships from the Minister of Culture and Art for his outstanding artistic achievements, and was also granted the award of the President of the City of Katowice a number of times. In 2014, he received the Honorary Award of the Polish Composers’ Union for his contribution to the promotion of Polish contemporary music.
Szymon Bywalec has given many world and Polish premiere performances. In 2000, he founded the Ars Musicae Chamber Orchestra, which specializes in performing early music, and the vocal ensemble Cappella Theoreticorum Cantans. In Poland and abroad, he has been a guest conductor for the Silesian Philharmonic, the Częstochowa Philharmonic, the Białystok Philharmonic, the Olsztyn Philharmonic, the Opera Polska orchestra from Wrocław (with whom he toured Germany) and the ensembles: Miskolci Szimfonikus Zenekar and Camerata Strumentale Citta di Prato. In May 2003, thanks to the Die Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung scholarship granted by the Warsaw Autumn Friends’ Foundation, he conducted the National Radio Orchestra of Romania at a concert inaugurating the International New Music Week in Bucharest.
He is presently the director of the Academic Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, and he runs the Karol Szymanowski Youth Symphony Orchestra (which in December 2001 participated in Nono Concerto di Natale in Vaticano). He regularly cooperates with the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. He is also a permanent conductor and artistic director of the New Music Orchestra, which popularizes new music and 20th-century classics. With this orchestra, he has performed at many contemporary music festivals, including Warsaw Autumn (in 2005 he collaborated with IRCAM on the performance of Boulez’s Répons), the Silesian Days of Contemporary Music, the International Festival of Contemporary Music Melos-Ethos in Bratislava and Velvet Curtain in Lviv, Musica Polonica Nova and Musica Electronica Nova in Wrocław, Paweł Szymański Music Festival in Warsaw, Beijing Modern in Beijing, Bridges in Vienna and Hindsgavl Festival i Klang – Copenhagen Avantgarde Music Festival.. With the said ensemble he also made archival recordings for the Polish Radio, prepared the first staging in Poland of Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale as translated by Jonasz Kofta at the Silesian Theatre in Katowice, and recorded the musical material for New Music Orchestra’s first album, which was nominated for a Fryderyk award in 2003.
In April 2009, Bywalec received the Pizzicato Supersonic Award for the album with Weronika Ratusińska’s music recorded with New Music Orchestra for DUX. His recording of Paweł Szymański’s Trzy Pieśni Do Słów Trakla (Three Songs to Words by Trakl) received a recommendation at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris in June 2007, while Magdalena Długosz’s Gemisatos and Ewa Trębacz’s things lost things invisible performed with Sinfonia Varsovia received a recommendation in June 2009. The CD with cello concertos by Scandinavian composers (Nørgård, Nordheim, Saariaho), recorded together with the Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg, received the Lyt til Nyt Pris - Danish Radio Award 2012 in January 2013. 2016 saw the release of the CD with Italian clarinettist Michelle Marelli and New Music Orchestra for Decca.
From 2013 to 2016, he was the artistic director of the Musica Polonica Nova Festival. Szymon Bywalec is a Professor at the Academy of Music in Katowice, currently working as an assistant to Professor Jan Wincenty Hawel.
Author: Małgorzata Kosińska, Polish Music Information Centre, Association of Polish Composers, June 2003; updated by MG, December 2019.
Translated by: Marek Kępa