Marta Ptaszyńska

Marta Ptaszyńska graduated in music theory and composition in the class of Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw (diploma in 1968 for the oratorio Chant for All the People on Earth). She also took private lessons with Witold Lutosławski. She is also a graduate of the percussion class of Jerzy Zgodziński at the State Higher School of Music in Poznań, from which she graduated with honors in 1967. She continued her composition studies in Paris (1969–70) with Nadia Boulanger and at the Center Bourdan de l’ORTF with Pierre Schaeffer, and improved her skills in the field of musical analysis with Olivier Messiaen. In 1972, she went to the United States to study drums with Cloyd Duff and Richard Weiner, and composition with Donald Erb at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In both disciplines, she received the Artist Diploma Degree. Almost from the beginning of her stay in the USA, she worked as a composition teacher; in 1998 she received a lifetime professorship at the University of Chicago. In 1991, she was the co-founder and vice-president of the American Society for Polish Music in New York. Due to the composer’s exceptional education, a large part of her works are intended for percussion – solo, in a chamber ensemble or with orchestral accompaniment. In her early works, the influences of avant-garde and sonorist currents are audible. In her mature compositions, the foreground is a sensitivity to color, lyricism and the combination oftraditional elements with modernity.