PROGRAM NOTES
Throughout his musical career composer and conceptualist Jerzy Sapieyevski has explored artistic relationships between various genres and disciplines. His projects often represent a unique synthesis of science, technology, and visual art, and this performance includes stories related to the moods of music.
These concerts focus on new ways of creating and listening to music-performances that expand the venues and transform the relationship between the musician and the listener. Sapieyevski's real-time compositions unite a wide variety of stylistic influences from classical and jazz to the avant-garde in an improvisatory way. He finds his inspiration from the American spirit of George Gershwin, the innovation of Philip Glass, and the spontaneity of improvisations of Keith Jarrett and Dave Brubeck.
Jerzy Sapieyevski, an award-winning composer, pianist, and conceptualist. As the founder and artistic director of NewCenturyMusic, he brings innovative ideas to the concert stage and music education concerts. His commissions and performances include the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, and numerous radio and television programs. His score for the Shakespeare Theatre's Production of Richard III was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award. In 2005 Jerzy Sapieyevski was decorated with the "Knight Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland".
Jerzy Sapieyevski began music and engineering studies in his native Poland and later completed his music degrees in the United States. Acknowledged in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, he is especially interested in creating interactive works that bring together various disciplines in live events. He appeared with the celebrated Polish actress, Anna Dymna, in her reading of poetry by the Nobel Prize Laureate, Czeslaw Milosz. "Aesop Suite" narrated by the renowned attorney Robert S. Bennett, explores the synergy between musical phrasing and gifted oratory.
Sapieyevski was a featured panelist at DanceUSA National Roundtable and served as an advisor for the National Institute for Education and the Arts. He was also a guest lecturer on "Cultural Diplomacy" at the Foreign Service Institute and delivered very popular pre-concert talks at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Major performers of his classical compositions included: the Tokyo String Quartet, An die Musik, Manhattan String Quartet, American Wind Symphony and the Atlanta Symphony, among others.