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Piotr Grella-Mozejko |
 Biography |
Born in Poland and living in Canada since 1989, Piotr Grella-Mozejko holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta for his dissertation on Tadeusz Peiper, Poland's leading avant-garde writer and theorist, chiefly active between World Wars (1918-1939); an M.Mus. in Composition degree from the same university, where he studied with Alfred Fisher, Henry Klumpenhouwer and the late Christopher Lewis; and an M.A. degree in Political Sciences from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Between 1977 and 1983, he took private composition courses with the late Prof. Edward Boguslawski and Prof. Boguslaw Schaeffer. In 1994, Grella-Mozejko was the only Canadian selected to participate in the prestigious "June in Buffalo" Festival and Conference, where he attended lectures by and master classes with Milton Babbitt, Donald Erb, David Felder, Lukas Foss, Roger Reynolds, and Charles Wuorinen.
Described by the German press as demonstrating "uncompromising honesty" (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), praised for his unorthodox aesthetics (Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung), and whose work is called "brawny, high-contrast... full of rich counterpoint and compelling textural changes" (The New York Times), "strikingly individual" (The Toronto Star), and "wonderful-sounding" (The Buffalo News, Buffalo, USA), Grella-Mozejko has written on commissions from, among others, The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Polish Congress, Edmonton Arts Council/Clifford E. Lee Fund, International Conversatorium of Organ Music, Polish Ministry of Culture and Art, as well as Polish Radio, Canadian Music Centre, and The Flanders Festival.
In 1997, he won the Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association (AMPIA) Award in Musical Score/Composer category (Black Angels by Cynthia Wells). Other prizes and awards include the All-Polish Composers' Competition in Lódz, Poland (1985, aennea for guitar solo); the All-Polish Composers' Competition in Kraków, Poland (1988, Motet for six vocal soloists), and The Pierre Boulez Canadian Composers Competition in Halifax, Nova Scotia (1991, Horror vacui - triptych for strings named by Pierre Boulez in third place). Grella-Mozejko is also recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship (2000-2002) as well as the University of Alberta Beryl Barns Award, Walter H Johns Fellowship, Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize, Marie Louise Imrie Graduate Award and, in 2004, a professional development grant awarded by The Canada Council for the Arts.
Grella-Mozejko has published in major scholarly and popular periodicals in Canada, Europe, and the UK, including the «Canadian Slavonic Papers», «Contemporary Music Review», «MusicWorks», «The Alberta New Music & Arts Review», to mention just a few. Currently, he covers Canada's classical music scene for Edmonton's arts and culture weekly, «SEE Magazine» and hosts his own show, «Tonus Vivus – Avant-garde and Beyond», on CJSR Radio in Edmonton, available world-wide on the Internet.
Presented in twenty-five countries in major centres such as Antwerp, Athens, Bangkok, Basel, Berlin, Bilbao, Dublin, Geneva, Kassel, Kaunas, Kraków, London, Los Angeles, Lausanne, Mexico City, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, Paris, Prague, Princeton, St. Petersburg, Seoul, Tallinn, Toronto, Turin, Utrecht, Vancouver, Vienna, Warsaw and Zurich, Grella-Mozejko's music has been commissioned, played and recorded by symphony and chamber orchestras in Canada and abroad (Edmonton, Halifax, Kraków, Kyiv, Regina, Scarborough, Wroclaw and Polish Radio Orchestra, Warsaw) as well as by such outstanding performers as the Penderecki, Szymanowski and Bozzini String Quartets, Quatuor de saxophones QUASAR, Duo Dilemme, Duo Levent, The Hammerhead Consort, Hermes Ensemble, Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, and many others.
His works have appeared on Acte Préalable, Arktos, ATMA Classique, Centrediscs, Clef Records, CML, Eclectra, New Music North and edition zeitklang labels, have been broadcast and published in Canada, Europe and USA, and performed at numerous festivals and concert series across North America, Europe and Asia. Voting Member of the Canadian Music Centre, Artistic Director of TONUS VIVUS – Society for New Music, Grella-Mozejko is also the executive producer of the New Music Alberta concert series. As a CD producer, he has over a dozen releases to his credit, featuring works by nearly eighty Canadian and international contemporary composers.
2009
