Professor Tomasz Bugaj

He cur­rently holds the posi­tion of Head of Chair of Con­duct­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Music in War­saw. Until 2005 he was the Artis­tic Direc­tor and Prin­ci­pal Con­duc­tor of the Cra­cow Phil­har­monic. He is a lead­ing mem­ber of Poland’s post-war gen­er­a­tion of conductors.

Born on 11.12.1950, he stud­ied con­duct­ing (1969–1974) with pro­fes­sor Stanisław Wisłocki at the War­saw Acad­emy of Music and musi­col­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of War­saw (1969–1972). Directly after grad­u­a­tion he took up work at the War­saw Cham­ber Opera (Warsza­wska Opera Kam­er­alna), where he was suc­ces­sively pro­moted from assis­tant con­duc­tor (to Kaz­imierz Kord, Jerzy Maksymiuk and Jur­gen Jur­gens among oth­ers) to con­duc­tor and finaly to the music direc­tor of this opera. With the W.Ch.O. he toured many times Europe and the USA, con­duct­ing operas of Haydn, Per­golesi, Cimarosa, Paisiello, Tele­mann, Han­del, Rossini and Donizetti, spe­cial­iz­ing — above all — in Mozart.

Tomasz Bugaj made a break­through in his career whan he won the 1978 Inter­na­tional Com­pe­ti­tion in Bris­tol, U.K. (Impe­r­ial Tobacco Inter­na­tional Con­duc­tors Award). This suc­cess led to appear­ances over sev­eral sea­sons with the Bournemouth Sym­phony Orches­tra and Bournemouth Sin­foni­etta and brought him in to con­tact with many lead­ing British ensem­bles, such as: Lon­don Phil­har­monic, Royal Scot­tish National, Royal Liv­er­pool Phil­har­monic, BBC Phil­har­monic, BBC Scot­tish Sym­phony, BBC Welsh, Scot­tish Cham­ber and Ulster Orchestras.

In Poland he was artis­tic direc­tor of the Pomeran­ian Phil­har­monic in Byd­goszcz (1980–1984), Artur Rubin­stein Phil­har­monic in Łódź (1987–1990) as well as reg­u­lar guest of the lead­ing Pol­ish orches­tras: War­saw Phil­har­monic, Pol­ish Radio National S.O. Katow­ice, Sin­fo­nia Varso­via and Pol­ish Cham­ber Orches­tra. He has been equally active in the field of opera, coop­er­at­ing with the Opera Houses in War­saw (Teatr Wielki), Łódź, Poz­nań, Gdańsk, Aachen, Leeds (Opera North), Bil­bao and Pamplona.

In Ger­many he con­ducted orches­tras in: Aachen, Berlin, Bochum, Duis­burg, Essen, Hagen, Flenns­burg, Her­ford (Nord­west­deutche Phil­har­monic), Gelsenkirchen, Mannheim, Munich (Munch­ener Rund­funk Orch­ester), Stuttgart, Saar­brucken, Weimar and Wies­baden. Tomasz Bugaj con­ducted sev­eral times the Mozar­teum Orches­tra in Salzburg, orches­tras in Bergen (Nor­way), Turku (Fin­land), RTL Lux­em­burg, Orquesta Nacional de Espana (Madrid), Orquesta Sin­fon­ica de Gran Canaria, Orquesta Sin­fon­ica de Bil­bao, National Cham­ber Orches­tra in Wash­ing­ton, Orches­tra of the RTE in Dublin, Orquesta Sin­fon­ica de Chile, Orches­tra Sin­fon­ica Sicil­iana in Palermo, Slo­vak Phil­har­monic, Orches­tra in Bratislava, Russ­ian National Sym­phony Orches­tra in Moscow and many, many others.

Among the halls in which he appeared are: Berlin Phil­har­monic and Schaus­piel­haus, Grieghallen in Bergen, Alte Oper in Frank­furt, Herku­lessaal in Munich, Lieder­halle in Stuttgart, Royal Fes­ti­val Hall and Bar­bi­can Hall in Lon­don, Teatro la Fenice in Venice, Grosses Few­st­spiel­haus in Salzburg and the Great Hall of the Moscow Concervatoire.

He took part in many inter­na­tional fes­ti­vals, such as: Fes­ti­val de Asturias, Bath Inter­na­tional Fes­ti­val of Music and Arts, Berliner Fest­wochen, Fest­spil­lene i Bergen, Carinthian Sum­mer, Chel­tenham Inter­na­tional Fes­ti­val of Music, Istam­bul Inter­na­tional Fes­ti­val, Wratislavia Can­tans, Ital­ian Fes­ti­vals in Lucca, Milan, Rav­ello, Taormina.

Tomasz Bugaj has been invited to par­tic­i­pate in numer­ous vocal com­pe­ti­tions: in Pam­plona, Bil­bao, War­saw, where he con­ducted dur­ing the final audi­tions, prizewin­ners’ con­certs and took part in the work of the jury.

Tomasz Bugaj’s record­ings have appeared on labels such as Orpheo, Pol­skie Nagra­nia, Yedang (South Korea), Musiques Suisses; he has also recorded for Pol­ish Radio, TVP, West­deutscher Rund­funk, Bay­erischer Rund­funk and BBC.