About

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Katarzyna Szwed was born in 1980 in Cracow, Poland and is currently living as a free lance-composer and music teacher in the Netherlands.

Szwed works together with individual musicians as well as with ensembles, also combining music with modern dance, visual art or (live) electronics. She also composes music for theater performances.

As an improvising pianist, she is the author and main pianist involved in ‘Piano Ocean’, a series of meditation-concerts inspired by the tradition of zen Buddhism.

She was awarded an M.A. in composition and music theory at the Cracow Music Academy in 2006. In 2009 she also received an M.A. in composition from the Rotterdam Conservatory and in 2014 she obtained a Ph.D in composition from the University of Birmingham, England. She has also been awarded several scholarships, for example the Creativity Scholarship of the Cracow City Council, by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, or by Dutch Funds for Performing Arts.

Her works have been performed at several music festivals such as the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Red Ear Festival in Rotterdam, and the ManiFeste of IRCAM, Paris. She cooperated with renowned music ensembles such as Nieuw Ensemble, Asko-Schönberg Ensemble, Nostri Temporis, Quartet New Generation, Osterreichisches Ensemble Fur Neue Musik, Silva Rerum, New Babylon, Hashtag Ensemble, Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST) and Song of the Goat Theater.

Privately she is a very proud mother of Leoś and the cat called Hejka.