Krzysztof Pawlisz

Organist, improviser, composer, church musician, educator. He was born in Kraków in 1977. He began learning to play the organ at the Fryderyk Chopin State Secondary School of Music under the direction of Aleksandra Gawlik in 1990. Then he continued his education successively under Julian Gembalski (Katowice), Jean Boyer (Lyon) and Pieter van Dijk (Amsterdam).

He is a two-time winner of the National Auditions of Organ Classes of 2nd Degree Secondary Music Schools in Wrocław (3rd prize in 1994, 1st prize in 1996), winner of 2nd prize (ex aequo, 1st prize not awarded) in the International Organ Competition in Magadino (Switzerland, 2002) and finalist in the Musica Antiqua Festival in Bruges (Belgium, 2006).

 

He also specialises in organ improvisation. He honed his skills in this respect under the direction of Julian Gembalski, Loïc Mallié, Gabriel Marghieri and others. He devoted his doctoral dissertation to this art, in which he presented, e.g., an original method for learning improvisation in styles that use Renaissance counterpoint techniques (Academy of Music in Kraków, 2012).

 

As a soloist, he has given concerts in Poland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Ukraine and Italy. He often appears alongside vocal ensembles performing Gregorian chant or medieval monody, improvising interludes on the organ using the alternatim technique or creating musical commentaries relating to the chants being performed.

 

With the Chorzów-based Gregorian ensemble Schola Cantorum Minorum Chosoviensis, he carried out the phonographic project Harmonie Universelle – a three-CD album filled with J. Titelouze’s compositions and improvisations on the 17th-century French organ. He also took part in the recording of a highly acclaimed two-CD album of old Polish Advent songs with improvised organ preludes (Chopin University Press, 2024).

 

Since 2018, as an assistant professor at the Department of Church Music of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, he has taught harmony, basso continuo and chamber music. Since 2005, he has also been associated with the Institute of Church Music in Kraków, where he teaches organ. Since 2017, he has served as organist of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Kraków.