The event, entitled Sounds from Behind the Iron Curtain: Polish Music after World War II, is organised by the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California on the 6th of April 2013. The day opens with the Musicology and Digital Humanities Conference, streamed live online for viewers around the world.
The conference brings together musicologists and cultural historians in a vivid conversation exploring the development of Polish music since 1945. Conference presentors were chosen by a distinguished committee of scholars: Ewelina Boczkowska (Dana School of Music, Youngstown State University), Lisa Jakelski (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester), and Renata Suchowiejko (Instytut Muzykologii, Jagiellonian University). Presentations focus on the relation of music to politics, identity and the reception of Western composers in Poland under Socialist Realism and during the Solidarity era. The conference programme also encompasses film screenings.
The talks scheduled as part of the conference are organised around three themes:
I. BEYOND SOCIALIST REALISM: POLISH MUSIC IN THE 1950s
Renata Pasternak-Mazur of Rutgers University presents Sound Spaces: Official, Unofficial, and In-Between Repertoires in Socialist Poland. Kurt Nelson from New York University gives a talk on Tadeusz Baird and the Cultural Thaw of the 1950s.
II. RECEPTION OF WESTERN COMPOSERS IN POLAND
Lisa Cooper Vest from Indiana University, Bloomington presents A Survey about the Work of Igor Stravinsky (1957): Stravinsky Reception and Polish Cultural Confidence at the Beginning of the ‘Thaw’. Cindy Bylander talks about Charles Ives and the Stalowa Wola Festival: Inspirations and Legacies
III. THE SOUNDS OF SOLIDARITY: MUSIC AND IDENTITY AFTER 1978
Andrea Bohlman of the University of Pennsylvania introduces Listening with the Polish Opposition in the 1980s. Paulina Piedzia Colón from the Graduate Center, CUNY talks about John Paul II, the Revolution of the Spirit, and Joanna Bruzdowicz’s Sonate d’Octobre. Marta Marciniak from the University at Buffalo, SUNY crowns the conference with her presentation, entitled Star Wars, or You Can Have Anything!: Polish Punk and the Politics of Everyday Life during the Cold War Era.
For more information about the presenters and their topics, see the organiser’s website.
Following the conference, a piano recital celebrating the centenary of Witold Lutosławski will feature internationally renowned jazz pianist Leszek Możdżer. Możdżer’s unique position as a jazz pianist is in part due to his enduring interest in music by a wide spectrum of contemporary Polish composers including jazz great Krzysztof Komeda, film music composers like Zbigniew Preisner and Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, and such towering figures in the history of Polish classical music as Witold Lutosławski.
Możdżer explores and reinterprets the music of his illustrious predecessors and colleagues using his own pioneering style that fuses classics and jazz and breathes life into well-known repertoire. His musical acuity lies in an uncanny ability to focus on salient features of a chosen style and invest them with a sound identity melding jazz and avant-garde classical traditions. Możdżer’s artistry reflects how Polish musicians have reinterpreted a genre that is native to the U.S.
In the afternoon, select manuscripts from the Polish Music Center’s Manuscript Collection will be presented to the public after the conference. The PMC Manuscript Collection was established with an initial donation of five major orchestral works by Lutosławski, personally deposited by the composer in 1985 at the founding of the PMC. The exhibit will include the Lutosławski manuscripts as well as Krzysztof Meyer’s opera Cyberiada and Krzysztof Penderecki’s first String Quartet, and other highlights of contemporary Polish music.
Event details:
Musicology and Digital Humanities Conference
9:00 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Ahmanson Center (ACB), Room 236 USC
Prior registration required at polmusic@usc.edu by Wednesday, the 3rd of April. The fee of $25 includes entrance to all presentations, film screenings, exhibits and concerts as well as a breakfast and lunch
Concert with Leszek Możdżer
4:00 p.m.
Alfred Newman Recital Hall, USC
no admission charge
Manuscript Exhibit
3-6 p.m.
Newman Recital Hall Vestibule, USC
no admission charge
The event is sponsorsed by the Polish Music Center of the USC Thornton School of Music and the Polish Consulate General in Los Angeles.
Paulina Schlosser, source: USC; 21.03.2013