Orliński Wins Gramophone Young Artist of the Year Award
He’s known for his countertenor and breakdancing. He’s talented and hard-working, and according to the American press, equally as charming. Jakub Józef Orliński has been chosen by Gramophone as the best young artist of the year.
Since 1977, the Gramophone Classical Music Awards have been one of the most distinguished awards in the world of classical music. The selection committee is made up of music critics from Gramophone magazine, as well as representatives of the genre, including retailers, DJs and musicians. The award categories include albums, orchestras, record companies as well as individual artists.
On 16th October 2019, Jakub Józef Orliński was named Gramophone's Young Artist of the Year. The singer is an alumnus of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, where he studied under Anna Radziejewska. From 2015 to 2017, he continued his education under Edith Wiens at the Juilliard School in New York. In the fall of 2018, he released his debut album Anima Sacra on the Erato/Warner Classics label, on which he was accompanied by the Il Pomo d’Oro ensemble, conducted by Maxim Emelyanchyev. The album uniquely contains works by 18th-century religious composers creating German and Italian Baroque music, with an emphasis on the Neapolitan School.
In the summer of that same year he debuted at London’s Wigmore Hall, where he will be returning in December 2019. In August of 2019, Orliński performed in Handel’s Rinaldo with the Frankfurt opera at the Glyndebourne Festival in Great Britain. Critics around the world have noted his vocal abilities. The Telegraph included him in their list of ‘The 10 Most Charming Opera Singers in the World’, while The New Yorker published a series of articles dedicated to Orliński’s career, artistic journey, as well as his social media presence and breakdancing passion.
The Adam Mickiewicz Institute was a partner of the award ceremony, which took place on 16th October 2019 in London. Attendees who visited the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms could listen to the performance of Arte dei Suonatori. The baroque orchestra, performing for almost a quarter century, received a Gramophone award in 2003 for ‘Best Baroque Recording’ for its performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s violin concerto La Stravaganza. That’s hardly the only prestigious award in the orchestra’s history, which has also received recognition from Diapason d’Or, Classics Today, Tokkata-Alte Musik Aktuell and BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Choice of the Month’.
In 2017, Gramophone chose another Polish laureate: Silesian Quartet’s album Grażyna Bacewicz: Complete String Quartets won in the Chamber Music category. The album was released through Chandos, with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. The album Lutosławski: Piano Concerto and Symphony No. 2, performed by Krystian Zimerman and the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Simon Rattle was distinguished by Gramophone in its August 2015 issue.