Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny graduated from the University of Wrocław in 2000 with a degree in biology. That year, she founded the Kameralny Chór Akademii Medycznej (Medici Cantantes Choir at the Medical University of Wrocław). In 2004, she received a diploma from the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław, where she studied Music Education and was awarded a diploma in 2005 from the Vocal Department. During this time, she was honoured with the first prize in the National Contest for Choir Conductors. In 2006, she completed the Postgraduate Voice Production and Training Programme at the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz. Since June 2006, Franków-Żelazny has been the artistic director of the National Forum of Music Choir. In 2008, she was awarded a special prize for conductors from the 39th Legnica Cantat National Choir Contest. Franków-Żelazny became the head of Polish National Youth Choir, which she also founded, in 2013. She completed course work at the Academy of Culture Leaders at the Economic University of Kraków, in 2014 and was distinguished with the Gloria Artis Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture. The following January, she was named the programme director of the Choral Academy of the National Forum of Music. In 2016, Franków-Żelazny was a music curator for the year that Wrocław served as the European Capital of Culture. The album DE PROFUNDIS – Polish Psalms of the 20th and 21st Century with the NMF Choir under her direction was awarded the Fryderyk prize for the best choral, oratorio and orchestra music, 2017. She currently works as an Associate Professor at the Academy of Music in Wrocław.
Paweł Łukaszewski was born on September 19, 1968, in Częstochowa. He studied cello under Andrzej Wróbel and composition under Marian Borkowski at the Academy of Music in Warsaw. In 1994, he graduated from the Arts Management program at Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poznań and he completed his post-graduate studies at the Choirmaster School in Bydgoszcz, in 1996. Łukaszewski has received a number of endowments, including the prestigious ZAiKS Polish Society of Authors and Composers scholarship and the scholarship for the promotion of creativity from the Ministry of Culture and the Arts. He was awarded first prize from Orfeo-Bogusław Kaczynski’s Foundation at the Academy of Music Competition in Warsaw in 1995 and received five celebrated Fryderyk awards from the Polish music industry between 1999 to 2011.
Łukaszewski has served as the president of the Musica Sacra Association since 1992 and held the post of Artistic Secretary of the Laboratory of Contemporary Music Festival and Association, since 1994, later becoming its Director. Additionally, he is a member of the Gaude Mater International Festival Council in Czestochowa, ZaiKS, and the Union of Polish Composers. Since 2002, he has served as the Director of the Musica Sacra Choir of the Warsaw-Praga Cathedral and the Musica Sacra Edition recording company. Łukaszewski has been presented with the Medal of Merit, the Award of the Baltic Chancellor of the Higher School of Humanities in Koszalin and the Medal of Merit for the Province of Koszalin, as well as the Order of Polonia Restituta. He received the St. Albert’s Award in 2006, the Silver Medal of Merit to Culture, Gloria Artis in 2011. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor in Composition at Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.
