BIOGRAPHIES

Dr. Mikolaj Warszynski has performed in recitals across North America, Europe and Asia, and enjoys a versatile career as a pianist, lecturer, and pedagogue.

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A Canadian pianist of Polish origin, Mikolaj Warszynski performs extensively as a soloist and as a chamber musician, and is equally comfortable playing music of the baroque, classical, and contemporary repertoire. Invitations to many prominent music festivals and societies have led to performances in South Korea at the Woobong Art Hall, in Warsaw at the Royal Lazienki Park under the Chopin monument and at the lwaszkiewicz Muzeum, in Gdansk at the Baltic Philharmonic, in Zakopane at the Szymanowski Festvial, in the French Alps at the Flaine Opus74 Summer Music Festival, in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts, in Czech Republic at the Janacek Hukvaldy Festival, in Sicily at the Falcone Borsellino Hall, in Vienna at the Old Town Hall, in Rotterdam at the Laurenskerk Cathedral.

 

In Canada, Warszynski has made recital appearances at the Place des Arts and the Chapelle historians de bon Pasteur in Montreal, at the Gallery 345 and the 'Nocturnes in City' series in Toronto, the Verdun Classical Music Society, New Music Edmonton, the Edmonton Recital Society, The Winspear Centre, Banff Centre for the Arts, and in Calgary at the Steinway Concert Hall. During the Chopin bicentennial, Warszynski performed the Chopin F minor concerto across Canada with the Mazurka String Quintet, and has appeared as soloist with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Edmonton, and in Poland at the Kielce Philharmonic.

He is also a founding member of the Warszynski Trio, dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Canadian composers, whose album Devil's Dance was released on Clef Records.

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As part of the ZUMI piano duo, together with his wife, pianist Zuzana Simurdova, Mikolaj gave the Canadian premiere of Disintegration by Claude Vivier, for the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. The Duo has gone on to perform recitals on tours in Canada, Europe, as well as two national tours of China, in 2015 and 2017. Most recently, the ZUMI duo has been awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for their recording of contemporary works by Canadian and international composers.

 

Mikolaj Warszynski is a recipient of numerous scholarships, grants, and awards from Canada and abroad, and was a gold medalist in the Festival de Musique du Royaume du Québec. Warszynski completed his bachelor's degree in piano performance at the University of Alberta, and participated in masterclasses at the Aspen School of Music in Colorado and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. In Europe, he furthered his graduate studies "cum laude" at the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands, where he was awarded a Sauter grand piano on loan from the National Instrument Foundation in Amsterdam.

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Upon his return to Canada, Mikolaj Warszynski became artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts before completing both his master's and doctorate degrees at the University of Montreal. He is a recipient of a doctorate scholarship from the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture du Quebec in support of his dissertation entitled "Exoticism and intercultural influences in the piano cycle Metopes (1915) by Karol Szymanowski". Mikolaj Warszynski has worked with many renowned professors, including Janet Scott-Hoyt, Marek Jablonski, Anton Nel, Sergio Perticaroli, Bernard Ringeissen, Krzysztof Jablonski, Jean-Paul Sevilla, Gilbert Kalish, Marc Durand, Paul Stewart, AquilesDelle Vigne.

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In addition to an active performing career, professor Dr. Warszynski has been active as an adjudicator at festivals across Canada, and has been invited to present lectures and masterclasses in Canada, Poland, and in the United States. He has taught piano in Canada at the Université de Montréal and at the Cégep de Drummondville, in France at the Flaine Opus74 Academy in the French Alps, and in South Korea, where he held a two-year teaching position as Assistant Professor in Piano at the Catholic University of Daegu. In addition to being the Music Liaison for the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, he is also the Artistic Director of Mazurka Music and Art Society of Alberta & co-founder of the Chopin Piano Studio, in Edmonton.

 

Warszynski has been heard on radio and television broadcasts across Canada on CBC, CKUA, CJSR and OMNI TV, in Czech Republic (Radio VItava), and in the USA (WPRB). His solo CD, with music by Haydn, Liszt, Szymanowski, and Chopin, has been released on the French label Anima Records in 2015, and has received excellent reviews from Fanfare Magazine (New York), Saisons de Culture (Paris), and the WholeNote (Toronto). His following album entitled Lisztomania, on the Wirth Institute Label, is based on a live piano recital at the University of Alberta from 2018. Most recently in 2023, the ZUMI Piano Duo released an album of the complete Dvorak Legends, also on the Wirth Institute Label.