Michał Gondko

In Michał Gondko’s “deft and fluid” (Early Music Today) lute playing “phrases come across like extempore thoughts chasing each other across the imagination, an effect many try for but very few succeed” (Lute News). One of the leading lutenists of his generation, he pursues his artistic goals as a soloist and musical director.

His first solo album Polonica (Ramée/Outhere Music, 2015), received international critical acclaim. On his most recent solo album Mortua dulce cano (Ramée/Outhere Music, 2021), he explores the sound of a unique historical instrument: the so-called “Presbyter” lute, built c. 1595. 

Michał Gondko is founder and artistic co-director of La Morra, an ensemble widely recognised for its renditions of the late Mediaeval and early Renaissance repertoire, as confirmed by such marks of musical distinction as the Diapason d’or, the Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award, as well as Gramophone and International Classical Music Award nominations. He is also recipient of Fryderyk, the Prize of the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry (ZPAV). 

He has shared the stage with such musicians as Dame Emma Kirkby and Jordi Savall, and regularly performs lute duets with Nigel North. Concert tours have taken him to the most European countries, as well as to the USA, the countries of the Middle East, China and Japan.