Professor Anna Jastrzębska-Quinn

Win­ner of the First Prize at the Inter­na­tional Chopin Com­pe­ti­tion in Majorca in 1982 and inter­na­tional piano com­pe­ti­tions in Barcelona (1975) and San­tander (1979). She received a diploma for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the 9^th Inter­na­tional Chopin Com­pe­ti­tion in War­saw where she was a mem­ber of the Pol­ish team and passed to Stage 2. In 1968–1974, as win­ner of national com­pe­ti­tions, she was a 7-times scholar of the F. Chopin Soci­ety in War­saw and the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Art.

She grad­u­ated with hon­ours from the Higher School of Music (now the Fry­deryk Chopin Uni­ver­sity of Music) in War­saw in 1976 where she stud­ied in Pro­fes­sor Jan Ekier’s class; the Geneva Con­ser­va­tory in 1979, Pro­fes­sor Harry Datyner’s class (vir­tu­oso diploma); the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada in 1981/1982 where she attended post­grad­u­ate courses led by Gyorgy Seboka, Mena­hem Pressler, Anton Kuerti and oth­ers. She has been per­form­ing since she was 16.

One of the piv­otal moments in her artis­tic career was her per­for­mance with the National Phil­har­monic Cham­ber Orches­tra con­ducted by Karol Teutsch at the National Phil­har­monic when she was still a stu­dent (1974). Ever since, she has given recitals, played with cham­ber orches­tras and sym­phony orches­tras in nearly all phil­har­mon­ics in Poland and also in Spain, Switzer­land, China, Canada, Ger­many, Aus­tria and Uruguay.

She has a large reper­tory in which Chopin’s music has a spe­cial place.

She has played with such con­duc­tors as: Pierre Colombo, Renato Riv­olta, Werner Pfaff, Pierre Hetu, Tang Li Hua, Ruben Gure­vich, Larry Liv­ingston, Romely Pfund, Klaus Zoephel, Juli Ribelles, Karol Teutsch, Jerzy Katlewicz, Woj­ciech Mich­niewski, Ste­fan Mar­czyk, Maciej Niesiołowski, Tadeusz Stru­gała, Szy­mon Kawalla, Zyg­munt Hassa, Adam Natanek, Marek Pijarowski, Andrzej Roz­marynow­icz, Włodz­imierz Por­czyński, Ste­fan Strahl, Piotr Warzecha, Jan Ślęk and Jerzy Herter.

As a cham­ber musi­cian she has played with Kaja Danc­zowska (vio­lin­ist), Raphael Hillier (vio­list), Shauna Rol­ston (cel­loist), David Stew­art (vio­lonist) and others.

She has taken part in many fes­ti­vals includ­ing “The Gen­er­a­tion of the Musi­cians of the 30^th Anniver­sary of the Pol­ish people’s Repub­lic” and the “Young Musi­cians Fes­ti­val” at the National Phil­har­monic in War­saw, the Pol­ish Piano Fes­ti­val in Słupsk, the F. Chopin Fes­ti­val in Duszniki, the Music Fes­ti­vals in Banff (Canada), Valen­cia (Spain) and Vil­lena (Spain).

She has made radio and tele­vi­sion record­ings for Pol­ish Radio and Tele­vi­sion (includ­ing many archival record­ings), RIAS in Berlin, Cana­dian Broad­cast in Mon­treal, Radio Suiss Romande in Geneva. He has also made record record­ings for Pol­skie Nagra­nia and the Span­ish record com­pa­nies SOMAGIC and Tabelet Estudis (CD). Her most impor­tant record­ings are:

• F. Chopin’s Piano Con­certo E-Minor and W. A. Mozart’s Piano Con­certo D-minor with Suiss Romande orches­tra con­ducted by P. Colombo;
• W. A. Mozart’s con­cer­tos for 2 and 3 pianos with the Cana­dian Broad­cast Orches­tra in Montreal;
• K. Szymanowski’s Masques for Radio Suiss were the first record­ing of the work for this radio.

Anna Jastrzębska-Quinn has also pub­lished in Poland and abroad and is co-editor of T. Ciurana’s col­lec­tion of Sonatas (Ciu­rana was a Span­ish com­poser of the clas­si­cist period) based on recently found manuscripts.

She has pre­sented sci­en­tific papers and con­ducted sem­i­nars and mas­ter courses in Poland, Spain, China, Aus­tria and Uruguay. She has also sat on com­pe­ti­tion juries in Poland, Esto­nia and Spain.

She acts as con­sul­tant for the Artis­tic Edu­ca­tion Cen­tre and is an expert of the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. She has worked at the Fry­deryk Chopin Acad­emy of Music in War­saw since 1979 with an inter­lude of sev­eral years when she was abroad. As pro­fes­sor at the Chair of Piano she teaches full-time stu­dents and post­grad­u­ate stu­dents from Poland, Spain, South Korea, Nor­way, Greece and Japan. She teaches in Pol­ish, Eng­lish, French, Span­ish and Russian.

She also teaches a piano class at the Z. Brzewski Music High School in Warsaw.

Her stu­dents have won many national and inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions (about 30 prizes and awards of dis­tinc­tion) and been granted many artis­tic schol­ar­ships, e.g., by the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Art.

Anna Jastrzębska-Quinn has a pas­sion for teach­ing. She treats each stu­dent indi­vid­u­ally and adjusts her meth­ods to the student’s apti­tude, per­son­al­ity and level of advance­ment. She believes that aca­d­e­mic stud­ies should stim­u­late artis­tic cre­ativ­ity sup­ported by solid piano tech­nique and that they should train inde­pen­dent professionals.