The Polish Chamber Choir

Polski Chór Kameralny (The Polish Chamber Choir) was founded by Ireneusz Łukaszewski in 1978 and ever since has been making a name for itself as a top ensemble of international renown.

Its declared aim is to work at an instrumental, "orchestral" level which, apart from other skills, requires total control of the vocal instrument.

The main interest of the 24 professional musicians lies on unaccompanied music, and especially on romanticism and contemporary music. Hence the countless compositions dedicated to the choir and that wealth of world premiere performances (on an annual average one every two or three weeks).

Besides that, mainly in oratorios and opera, Polski Chór Kameralny regularly co-operates with many important symphonic and chamber orchestras, yet also with e.g. the Academy of Ancient Music, the Neue Düsseldorfer Hofmusik as well as with other specialist Early Music ensembles from all over Europe. A main stay of the choir's musical work is their regular co-operation with guest conductors from all over the world (Ericson, Gronostay, Bernius, Layton, and many others).

Notwithstanding all their serious work, Polski Chór Kameralny enjoys experiments - in 2001, for example, they participated in the world's first genuine real-time internet concert. Polski Chór Kameralny frequently appears at international festivals, among them the Warsaw Autumn and Wratislavia Cantans, the Ruhr-Festival, the "rendez-vous musique nouvelle", but also Salzburg, Dresden, Berlin and Tokyo. Its concert tours take it through all of Europe, to the USA and to Japan.

Besides nigh 60 CDs (the latest, and at the composer’s instigation, being the first ever complete recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s entire output a cappella(including world premiere recordings ). Published March 09 with DUX), MCs and videos many of which have won gramophone prizes, Polski Chór Kameralny has recorded profusely for Polish and many European Radio and TV stations. Among the events conceived and organized by Polski Chór Kameralny the most spectacular is the International Mozart Festival Mozartiana, presenting to a wide public Mozart's music in a diversity of styles and drawing thousands of people to Gdansk-Oliva each August and, in this Handel anniversary year featuring Mozart’s intriguing version of The Messiah. Among the other larger projects on Polski Chór Kameralny’s agenda for 2009 there are a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, several performances of various new pieces of unaccompanied music as part of the Gaude Mater and the Wratislavia Cantans festivals, the cappella concert in the 84th International Bach Festival(including the modern first performance of a recently discovered work by Bach’s predecessor Johann Rudolf Ahle.), to name but a few.