Scena Akademii PRO
Scena Akademii PRO — a space dedicated to young professionals fascinated by the newest music.
We are about to meet the participants of the third edition of the Akademia PRO programme.
Akademia PRO Hashtag Ensemble is a year-long mentoring programme aimed at students and graduates of music academies who wish to deepen their interest in the newest music and develop their own artistic identity.
Selected through a competition, the participants take part in an intensive series of workshops and masterclasses led by musicians of Hashtag Ensemble and invited guests. The concert programme is made up of pieces chosen by the participants themselves — the outcome of their individual explorations and collaborations formed during shared artistic work within the Academy.
Specially for Akademia PRO participants, the following composers dedicated works:
Olga Pasek, Jan Błażejczak, and Patrycja Kołodziejska.
Program:
Olga Pasek time dilation loops *
Aleksandra Kaca fjarlægur for violin and viola
Patrycja Kołodziejska the house has been a burial site *
Wojciech Blecharz stimm(i)[u]ng for reversed cello
Paweł Janas Hypnosis for accordion
Jan Błażejczak green, I want you green *
*premiere
Performers:
Stefania Grabiec violinDorota Malmor violaAntoni Majewski celloTomasz Piasecki accordionNadia Mikołajczyk percussionKarol Knapiński conductorMichał Adamin trumpet *
Julian Paprocki clarinet ***free auditor of Akademia PRO
** guest
Production:
programme concept and text: Aleksandra Demowska-Madejskaproduction: Aleksandra Demowska-Madejskavisual identity: Aleksandra Ołdaksound engineering: Kosma Standera
The Hashtag Lab Contemporary Music Space is co-funded by the City of Warsaw. The media patron of the Hashtag Lab Contemporary Music Space is POLMIC.PL, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Dwójka Polskie Radio.
Media patronage over Akademia PRO — Meakultura Foundation.
About the performers:
Stefania Grabiec — Violinist, undergraduate student at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, in the class of Prof. Dr hab. Szymon Krzeszowiec and Asst. Dr Sulamita Ślubowska, and currently a student at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, in the class of Prof. Dr hab. Jakub Haufa. Laureate of national and international competitions, especially in the field of contemporary music (including 1st Prize at the 17th National Contemporary Music Competition in Płock). Scholarship recipient of the National Recovery Plan in 2024. She performed as soloist with the Pueblo Symphony Orchestra in Colorado (USA) and has collaborated with the New Music Orchestra, the National Philharmonic, and the Virtuosi of Houston Young Artists Chamber Orchestra. She has taken part in prestigious festivals and projects including Musica Electronica Nova 2025, Les Folles Journées de la Musique, and Minimal Music at NOSPR. She has performed in many renowned concert halls of institutions such as the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, the National Philharmonic, the Silesian Philharmonic, the National Forum of Music, the chamber hall of the Grand Theatre — National Opera, Hoag Hall and Memorial Hall in Pueblo (Colorado, USA), The Wortham Center, and Brown Theater in Houston (Texas, USA). She has honed her skills under distinguished teachers including Eszter Haffner, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Boris Garlitsky, Bartosz Bryła, Wojciech Koprowski, Jakub Jakowicz, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Anna Kwiatkowska, Adam Kośmieja, and Mateusz Ryczek. She is a participant in solo, chamber, and orchestral courses including Wakacyjne Kursy Muzyki Nowej dla Wykonawców in Bydgoszcz, Schloss Akademie International Masterclass in Paris and Vienna, Zakopiańska Akademia Sztuki, and Mannheim School — European Youth Orchestra Academy.
Dorota Malmor — Violist, graduate of master’s studies at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice in the class of Dr hab. Elżbieta Mrożek-Loska. Still searching for her place in the musical landscape, she is a lover of both new techniques and historical performance practice. She finds the greatest joy in chamber music in all configurations. Privately she is a bookworm, kitchen experimenter, and fan of raspberry tea.
Antoni Majewski — Cellist who in his artistic practice focuses on the performative act as a direct, experiential dialogue with the audience. He trained at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden, and the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. He is currently a doctoral student at the Academy of Art in Szczecin. He is a competition laureate and scholarship recipient from, among others, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the National Recovery Plan, and laureate of the Award of the President of Bydgoszcz. He has performed at venues including Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, the Krzysztof Penderecki European Music Centre in Lusławice, and TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin, as well as at numerous festivals, and he works as a creator and curator within the W788 Foundation and the Koherencje Foundation.
Nadia Mikołajczyk — Artist for whom percussion instruments, and the marimba in particular, constitute the primary space for expressing emotions and inspiring others. She views music as a living dialogue with the listener, grounded in authenticity and a constant search for means of expression. Music is for her a form of expression, especially through instrumental theatre, where sound forms an inseparable unity with movement and gesture. It is in this unity that she finds the freedom to create art that is fully coherent with her inner world.
Karol Knapiński — Originally from Wrocław, where he completed his music studies (piano, conducting, choral conducting) and university studies (Polish philology). He studied part of his programme at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn, and in the course of academic exchanges also collaborated with the Music Conservatory in Tbilisi and the Polytechnic University of Turin. As a conductor he has had the opportunity to perform with the most important choral ensembles in Poland (the NFM Choir, Polish Radio Choir — Lusławice, Vocal Ensemble of the Polish Royal Opera). He had the opportunity to learn new music at the Wakacyjne Kursy Muzyki Nowej in Bydgoszcz (including with Szymon Bywalec, Martyna Zakrzewska, and Adam Kośmieja) and from Hashtag Ensemble. In 2024 he co-founded the vocal ensemble pół.chór, which performs both music of the earliest eras and world premieres of new compositions by the youngest creators (Alina Dzięcioł, Jan Paweł Przegendza, Piotr Dogoński). He is a laureate of scholarships from the President of Wrocław and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. He writes academic and critical articles.
Tomasz Piasecki — Accordionist, an artist committed to performing music of every kind. He continually explores the sonic and physical world in order to discover new meanings. He is co-creator of many projects that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional perception of art. His goal is to spread and derive joy from the fruits of his work. In his free time he sails on lakes and oceans.
Michał Adamin — Trumpeter, regularly associated with the Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra im. Jerzy Semkow. He studied at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, the Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya in Barcelona, and the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. In the 2025/2026 season he is a free auditor of Akademia PRO Hashtag Ensemble. He has collaborated with, among others, Szymon Bywalec, Andrzej Bauer, Ignacy Zalewski, and Rudiger Bohn.
About the works:
Jan Błażejczak — green, I want you green — the work is based on the premise that timbre is the overarching organising principle of the musical course, and that form arises directly from its transformations over time. The sonic material is shaped through instrument preparations and live sound processing. Electronics subtly extend and model the sound of the acoustic instruments. Given the delicate character of the sounds produced, all instruments are equipped with microphones, enabling the capture of the finest articulatory nuances and the full revelation of tonal richness.
Olga Pasek — time dilation loops. The ensemble consists of: clarinet, accordion, violin, viola, cello, and percussion, enriched by an electronic layer in the form of tape (quadraphonic system) and live electronics — processing applied to all instruments. The composition is inspired by the phenomenon of time dilation, described in the theory of relativity as a difference in the measurement of the passage of time made simultaneously in two different frames of reference. In the context of the piece, the main source of inspiration is the cosmos — a space in which time slows near massive objects and for objects moving at great speed. The faster a given object moves, the more slowly time passes for it relative to an observer at rest or moving more slowly. The main musical premise of the work is the manipulation of tempo, rhythm, and the aforementioned “flow of time.” The leading idea is the creation of textures and lines for individual instruments which, based on different tempos, give the impression of a blurred pulse, “floating” structures, and sudden slowings and accelerations. This idea is the result of my previous interest in the tool of “time stretching,” which in electronic music allowed me to stretch and compress the same sound sample and then layer the results on top of one another. In time dilation loops this technique is transposed onto the terrain of instrumental performance, opening up new possibilities for working with acoustic sound. Short melodic motifs serve as the musical material; these are then extremely stretched and compressed in their duration, and also layered on top of one another. This allows for interesting textural and sonic solutions, leading to the blurring of traditionally conceived pulse and the creation of the impression of the simultaneous flow of time at different tempos.
Patrycja Kołodziejska — the house has been a burial site. In the work the house has been a burial site, an abstract narrative dominates, based on the deconstruction of classical instrumental and orchestral forms and the cultural and semantic contexts associated with them. The composition refers to the experience of the liminal — a state of transition in which the previous frameworks of meaning begin to lose their sense, and new ones have not yet been formed; it is the experience of a certain deformation in which the subject loses stable points of reference: perception becomes fragmentary and unstable, causing time and space to disperse. This should trigger the abandonment of automatic interpretive schemas. This work, like the great majority of my output, constitutes some form of memories to which we have no access — they are, in a sense, unattainable and resistant to precise definition. The means I employ seem like dust or fine powder, creating an imperceptible yet omnipresent aspect of reality. I try to create a situation comparable to a place that seemingly exists, yet in order to visit and experience it, one would have to travel millions of kilometres, and even then it would be impossible to actually reach it, since it exists only as a distorted memory. In the composition the house has been a burial site I draw on the aesthetics of glitch as an exploration of digital disturbances in a form-generating context, on the aesthetics of ambient and the drone genre, where elements of the composition function in a state of suspension, devoid of clear narrative or climax; I also draw on the aesthetics of early recordings from the beginning of the 20th century, which contain a characteristic quality that I also employ in the instrumental parts. In the work I focus on guiding listeners through a series of static, contemplative perceptual states; although the individual segments undergo only subtle and slow transformations, their accumulation builds a clear dramaturgical movement — grounded in the tension between stillness and change, stability and disintegration.
Aleksandra Kaca — Fjarlægur is a piece about what departs or is already distant. About what changes its shape, blurs, and dissolves as time passes. This can be heard in the delicate textures of violin and viola — harmonics, harmonic trills, and the final detuning of sound that fades, as it were, into silence.
About the composers of the premieres:
Jan Błażejczak — Second-year master’s student in the composition class of Asst. Dr Miłosz Bembinow and in electronic music composition in the class of Asst. Dr hab. Wojciech Błażejczyk at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 2024. His work has been presented both in Poland and abroad, and he has had the opportunity to collaborate with acclaimed ensembles such as JACK Quartet, Airis Quartet, and Kwartludium. He trained under acclaimed composers at the Young Composers Academy in Ticino (Switzerland, 2024) and at the Impuls festival in Graz (Austria, 2025).
Olga Pasek — Composer and performer. She completed studies in composition and film music composition at the Academy of Music in Łódź in the class of Marcin Stańczyk, and also studied under Michal Rataj at HAMU in Prague under the Erasmus programme. In 2025 she completed studies in composition with electronic, film, and theatre music at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in the class of Ignacy Zalewski. She takes part in various workshops, where she has worked with figures including Oscar Bianchi, Johannes Kreidler, Francesco Filidei, Marc Andre, Juste Janulyté, Chaya Czernowin, and Simon Steen-Andersen. She writes film and theatre music, creates installations, and is a finalist and laureate of various composition competitions. Her works have been performed in Poland and abroad, primarily at the Musica Moderna session, but also at, among other venues, the Musica Privata festival, the Zielona Góra Philharmonic, the Prague Zoo, the Ravekjavik festival, during events organised by the Marek Edelman Dialogue Centre in Łódź, and on Polish Radio. Her recent interests centre on improvised electronic music, including no-input mixer playing.
Patrycja Kołodziejska — Composer, flutist, improviser, student of composition with electronic music in the class of Dariusz Przybylski and Wojciech Błażejczyk at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, and also in the class of Brigitta Muntendorf at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne under the Erasmus programme. She has participated in international courses and workshops related to contemporary music, including Impuls — International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music in Graz, Akademie für zeitgenössische Musik at the Hochschule Luzern, and the International Young Composers Academy in Ticino. Her works have been performed in Poland and abroad, including by Klangforum Wien, Kwartludium, Decoder Ensemble, and Ensemble Modern. She participated in the Warszawska Jesień festival, presenting an audiovisual performance titled S C A T T E R I N G — an event combining improvised electronic music with video. She composes music that is acoustic, electroacoustic, and electronic. Her areas of interest include programming, performative elements, and philosophical and social concepts, which form the foundation of her works. Characteristic features of her musical language include deconstruction, Lachenmann type beat, metal sounds, glitches, and contextuality. In her works she uses various media, and she also participates in the creation of audiovisual installations and other forms of multimedia art.