Music Current 2025: Małgorzata Walentynowicz
Project Arts Centre
As part of Music Current Festival 2025.
Małgorzata Walentynowicz, piano, midi controllers
Will you wear me today? Maybe tomorrow? The titular quote, from Monika Dalach Sayers’ CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK, highlights the fleeting nature of modern products. The fashion industry, one of the largest global sectors, is also among the most destructive, responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. The “buy and throw away” culture ensures most clothing is worn only a few times before being discarded. Fast fashion makes replacing garments cheaper and easier than repairing them.
In shopping malls, luxurious scents of fruits and flowers subtly manipulate customers’ emotions, encouraging consumption. In Mathias Monrad Møller’s composition Fruits, these synthetic aromas fill the space like electronic artefacts, influencing our senses. The Mountain and the Maiden is a documentary by Hoffman and von Heiseler with music by Sarah Nemtsov exposes the hidden side of our lifestyle – the journey of discarded products and the consequences of unbridled consumption. The film was shot at a massive landfill in New Delhi. The shimmering colours of toxic fumes rise above the mountainous landfill.
The film features a unique soundtrack: a live piano performance interwoven with landfill sounds— truck rumbles, bird cries, and human voices—creating a haunting “silent story” of the 21st century.
Małgorzata Walentynowicz is a Polish pianist specialising in contemporary music. Renowned for innovative solo performance and ensemble collaboration, she is interested in works that search for the connection between music and the body, and the relationship between music and visual art, performance art, theatre, video, and photography. Her captivating multimedia projects, seamlessly blend traditional piano with cutting-edge electronics, keyboards, and synthesisers, to explore connections between the human body and technology. She performs with the Ensemble Garage, based in Cologne, and the New European Ensemble based in The Hague.
She has performed at major festivals, including: Warsaw Autumn, MaerzMusik, Ultraschall Berlin, Eclat Stuttgart, Heroines of Sound, Chamber Music Days in Witten, Mixtur Festival Barcelona, Rainy Days in Luxembourg, Klangspuren Schwaz, Musica Strasbourg, Gaudeamus Musikweek, ISCM World Music Days, the Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, SPOR in Aahrus, Klang in Copenhagen, Eights Bridges, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Sacrum Profanum in Cracow, Musica Polonica Nova, and Musica Electronica Nova in Wrocław, Tzlil Meudcan Tel Aviv.
As a soloist, Walentynowicz has collaborated with various orchestras, including the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Polish Radio Orchestra, Sinfonia Iuventus, Sinfonia Varsovia, the New Music Orchestra, Illinois Modern Ensemble, Ensemble Neofonia. Her interpretations have been released on several albums on renowned labels such as KAIROS, WERGO, DUX, ANAKLASIS and she was awarded the prestigious “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.”
She graduated from the Academy of Music in Gdańsk, Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover, and the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, where she obtained an honours degree in the interpretation of contemporary music. She holds a doctorate in art and holds a professor position at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk. She has won First Prize at the Gaudeamus Interpreters’ Competition in Amsterdam and the First Prize at the Yvar MikhashoffTrust for New Music Competition in Buffalo, New York. She has also received a scholarship for excellence in performance from the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music and was nominated for the Classical:Next Innovation Award in Rotterdam.
Programme
Monika Dalach Sayers - CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK, 2020 (revised 2024) (for midi controller, audio playback and video) 12'
Mathias Monrad Møller - Fruits, 2018–2024, (pieces for piano and midifiles) 20'25"
The Mountain and The Maiden, 2019, a film by Shmuel Hoffman and Anton von Heiseler with a composition by Sarah Nemtsov (for keyboard solo, amplified piano and voice) 22'