Join us for a night of popular film music! The NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic will be joined by the NFM Choir and the NFM Boys' Choir to present your favourites from films including Beauty and the Beast, Fantasia, Star-Trek and Harry Potter.

Tateo Nakajima began his music career in violin performance at the Upper Canada College and the Royal Conservatory of Music. Later, he perused graduate studies at the Utrechts Conservatorium in The Netherlands under Viktor Liberman and Hirschhorn, also studying orchestral conducting with Gilbert Varga and Charles Bruck. Nakajima spent four years as a Principal Conductor of the Timisoara State Opera in Romania. He currently serves as one of Artec’s Principal Auditorium Designers and works in theatre planning and auditorium acoustics aspects of a wide range of projects. He has overall design and management responsibility for projects ranging from concert halls to pop entertainment venues. He has worked as a lead consultant for a number of well-known conductors, orchestras and opera companies. Nakajima recently received credit for acoustical designs of our own new state-of-the-art NFM building. For the project, the architect was inspired by a musical instrument. The shape and the façade of our Main Hall covering imitates the timber and resembles the body of a string instrument.

Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny founded the Medici Cantantes Choir at the Medical University of Wrocław in 2000.  In 2004, she received a diploma from the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław, where she studied Music Education and graduated 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. 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. 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.

Małgorzata Podzielny is a graduate of the Music Education Department in conducting under professor Maria Oraczewska-Skorek, as well as the Composition, Conducting, Music Theory and Music Therapy Department of the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław. She completed her Postgraduate studies for Choirmasters in Bydgoszcz and is a grant holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Since September 2002, she has been conducting the Con Brio Choir, String Orchestra and chamber ensembles at the Grażyna Bacewicz Primary Music School, in Wrocław. She currently holds the title of Artistic Director of the Vocal Ensemble, Rondo. For four years she has served as the deputy director of the Sacred Music School at the Theology Department of Opole University and as a lecturer of Music Education at the Wrocław Music Academy. Additionally, Podzielny participates at workshops and seminars as a guest lecturer on the issue of voice emission in boys’ chorus.

Alixandra Porembski, English Language Annotator