Playing with Monsters

Mateusz Ryczek (1986) – composer. In 2011, he graduated with distinction with a Master’s degree from the Academy of Music in Wrocław, having studied under Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil (composition), Cezary Duchnowski (computer-assisted composition) and Zbigniew Karnecki (theatre and film music). In 2019, he was awarded a Doctor of Musical Arts degree (doctoral thesis entitled ‘The Emergence of Pitch Algorithms Based on the Cello Concerto Zjawy’). Mateusz Ryczek’s works have been performed numerous times both in Poland and abroad (Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Turkey, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Belarus, Russia, Switzerland, Austria, the USA, Cuba, Ukraine, Japan). In 2013, his monographic album PLANETONY was released by For Tune Records. He is a laureate of numerous composition competitions and a scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and the Marshal of Lower Silesia. He consults his compositions with the wind, the sun and his daughters: Rozalia and Aurelia.

Justyna Skoczek was born in Głogów. She is an opera coach and pianist. In 2003, she graduated from the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław, having studied piano under Włodzimierz Obidowicz. Between 2003 and 2012, she worked as a coach and soloist at the Wrocław Opera. During this time, she was involved in the preparation of almost all productions, particularly the premieres and world premieres of 20th- and 21st-century Polish operas on the Wrocław stage – Szymanowski’s King Roger, Penderecki’s Paradise Lost, Knapik’s La libertà chiama la libertà, Krauze’s The Trap, and Duchnowski’s The Garden. She is not currently affiliated with any single theatre on a permanent basis. She collaborates with the Wrocław Opera, the Grand Theatre in Łódź, the Grand Theatre – National Opera in Warsaw, the Stanisław Moniuszko Grand Theatre in Poznań, and the Polish Theatre in Wrocław, with which she staged the complete production of Mickiewicz’s *Dziady* in 2016, directed by Michał Zadara.  She collaborates with instrumentalists and singers, performing 20th- and 21st-century chamber music with them. In the Square Music Trio, founded in 2014, she works alongside soprano Ewa Vesin and double bassist Paweł Jabłczyński on a repertoire comprising works by Giovanni Bottesini and her own transcriptions of works by other composers. Since 2001, she has been a lecturer at the Vocal Department of the Academy of Music in Wrocław, where she defended her doctoral thesis in 2015.