Marcin Szelest

Marcin Szelest studied organ at the Academy of Music in Krakow with Miroslawa Semeniuk-Podraza (M.A. with honors, 1997) and at The Boston Conservatory with James David Christie (Artist Diploma in Organ Performance, 1999). He won the First Prize at the Second International Sweelinck Organ Competition in Gdańsk (1995). He has performed in Europe and the USA as a solist, artistic director of the ensemble Harmonia Sacra, and member of other period instrument ensembles, including The Bach Ensemble, Concerto Palatino and Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra. He published articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Polish sources and their editing, and prepared the edition of the complete works of Stanislaw Sylwester Szarzynski for the Monumenta Musicae in Polonia series. His habilitation thesis, Stylistic changes in the Italian organ music at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (Kraków 2007), was awarded the Polish Prime Minister prize (2008). Currently he is professor of organ and head of Early Music Department at the Academy of Music in Kraków, artistic director of Stary Sącz Early Music Festival, and organist of the restored 1704 organ in the Holy Cross church in Kraków.