Photo Wojciech Grzędziński

Jury member

Krzysztof Meyer

Distinguished composer, pianist, teacher, author of publications about music. Long-standing professor at the Academy of Music in Kraków and the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne. For many years sat on the programme committee of the International Festival of Contemporary Music ?Warsaw Autumn?.

Meyer is a graduate of the State College of Music in Kraków (currently the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music), which he completed with distinction majoring in both composition and music theory. He was taught composition by Stanisław Wiechowicz and, after the latter?s death, by Krzysztof Penderecki. He went on to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, where he stayed three times (in 1964, 1966 and 1968) to supplement his studies of composition and piano.

After completing his own education, Meyer began teaching at his alma mater, where he worked between 1966 and 1987. He was employed as the school?s pro-vice-chancellor (1972-1975) and as director of the Music Theory Department (1975-1987). He came back to lecture there from 2008 to 2014. He was also employed as a professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne between 1987 and 2008. In addition, he has lectured on contemporary music in such countries as Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Switzerland, Venezuela and the Soviet Union. As a pianist, he performed with Ensemble MW2, with whom he appeared in concert in 1966-1968 in Poland and throughout Europe. In subsequent years, he gave concerts as a piano soloist and chamber musician mostly performing his own compositions, but writing music was his dominant creative activity.

Between 1971 and 1989, Meyer was a member of the General Board of the Polish Composers? Union, and served as its president in 1985-1989. He sat on the programme committee of the International Festival of Contemporary Music ?Warsaw Autumn? for fourteen years, between 1974 and 1988. The artist has also written about music: a monograph on Dmitri Shostakovich translated into five languages, a two-volume monograph on Witold Lutosławski (as a co-author) and several dozen articles, mainly devoted to contemporary music, published in Poland and abroad.