The final concert of the 61st Tadeusz Baird Young Composers Competition and the announcement of the winners took place on 19 June 2020 in the Concert Hall of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the concert took place without an audience. The seven works that qualified for the second stage of the competition were performed by The Whoop Group, FCUM Saxophone Quartet, and Brzewski & Szymanowski Saxophone Quartet. A recording of the performance can be accessed at soundcloud.com.
Representatives of the Jury—Alicja Gronau (chairwoman), Marcel Chyrzyński, Paweł Gusnar, Monika Kędziora and Aldona Nawrocka—chose the following compositions to be honored:
- Tadeusz Baird Award: Nemesis by Wojciech Chałupka
- Second Honor (shared ex-aequo): ertk by Oktawia Pączkowska and Fala pomarańczowo-zielona by Jan Załęcki
- Third Honor: O pewności by Franciszek Araszkiewicz
The Tadeusz Baird Young Composers Competition (formerly known as the Youth Competition of the Polish Composers’ Union) has been organized annually by ZKP since 1958. It is intended to support young Polish composers at the start of their career and encourage them to work independently.
The main prize—the Tadeusz Baird Award—is awarded in the amount of $2,500 USD to be used for further composer studies and was traditionally funded by Alina Sawicka-Baird, wife of the composer. Last year’s main prize was funded by composer Marta Ptaszyńska, and this year the Award was funded by the PZU Foundation. Other Honors are financed by the Main Board of the Polish Composers’ Union. A non-statutory prize in the Competition is a print edition of the winning work by Ars-Musica (Marek Kunicki) in the “Paweł Gusnar Collection” publishing series.
Since 1990, the Tadeusz Baird has been open to all Polish composers who were under 35 on the day of its closure (previously it was intended only for graduates of the composition classes of state music colleges). The subject of the competition is different every year.
[Sources: polmic.pl, zkp.org.pl]