Myćka, Katarzyna

Solo appearances at leading marimba festivals in Osaka (1998), Linz (2004) and Minneapolis (2010) have given Myćka an international reputation as a pioneer of her instrument. In 1997 she gave her debut in the USA in Anaheim near Los Angeles at the International Drum Festival of the Percussive Arts Society (PASIC). Since 2005 she has been the head of its German chapter. She has been a guest soloist, amongst others, with the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bochum Philharmonic Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of Bogotá, the Orchestra of the Kassel State Theatre, the Schleswig-Holstein Symphony Orchestra in Flensburg, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the New Brandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Slovakian Philharmonic Orchestra in Bratislava and the Polish Philharmonic Orchestra in Danzig, Łódź, Stettin/Szczecin, Oppeln and Wałbrzych.

Katarzyna Myćka places particular value on training young artists. In 2003 she set up the International Katarzyna Myćka Marimba Academy (IKMMA), since when it has been repeated every two years over a period of eight days during the summer holidays featuring other international teachers. During this time all the participants receive solo lessons for forty minutes every day. Daily concerts also give the students the opportunity for ensemble playing and solo performances. Between 2003 and 2007 the Academy took place at the Karol Lipinski University for Music in Breslau/Wrocław (Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipińskiego we Wrocławiu); in 2009 at the College of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main; in 2011 at the College of Music in Nuremberg; and in 2013 at the Conservatorium of the City of Luxemburg. On the occasion of the Academy meeting in Hannover in 2015 the teachers gave an opening concert in the Richard-Jacoby-Saal of the Music College. There was also a concert with works by the Greek composer Christos Hatzis, and a closing concert given by the participants featuring chamber music by Mussorgsky, Jarrod Cagwin and Eric Sammut. From 2006 to 2009 Myćka taught at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Music Academy in Posen/Poznań (Akademia Muzyczna im. Ignacego Jana Paderewskiego w Poznaniu), the first music college in Poland to offer a Masters course in Marimba Studies. In Germany Myćka is fighting to separate marimba studies from drum departments in order to establish independent courses in the instrument for students in music colleges.

Between 1997 and 2008 she recorded six CDs. The majority of these contain compositions by contemporary composers and were recorded by the Südwestrundfunk broadcasting company in Stuttgart. She has also recorded concerts with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Saarbrücken (2001) and a cembalo/marimba concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach with the Bucharest National Radio Orchestra (2005). For November 2015 she is planning a new CD recording, this time with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the virtuoso trumpeter Gábor Boldoczki and the conductor Matthias Kuhn, featuring concertos by Ignatowicz, Séjourné, Sammut and Ney Rosauro.

Axel Feuß, March 2016

Sources:

2006: Interview with Evgeniya Kavaldzhieva on marimba-portal.de

2009: Interview with Tobias W. Pfleger on klassik.com

The artist’s website: marimbasolo.com

Instrument Marimba One: marimbaone.com

www.stuttgarter-philharmoniker.de

Anna Ignatowicz-Glińska: Concerto for Marimba, Trumpet and String Orchestra. Katarzyna Myćka with the Prague Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Matthias Kuhn, in the Liederhalle Stuttgart, 2011 (youtube.com)

Information given by the artist