During the 76th ceremony of the Grands Prix Internationaux du Disque, organized by the French Académie Charles Cros, Polish composer Elżbieta Sikora will receive the Prize of the President of the French Republic for her entire body of work.
The award ceremony will take place on March 21, 2024 at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Paris, under the patronage of Emmanuel Macron, the President of France. Since 1947, the French Académie Charles Cros has been awarding prizes for the best musical recordings, as well as the President of France Prize for a composer’s full body of work. In recent years, recipients of this award have included Kaija Saariaho and Bernard Cavanna. Recently, Académie Charles Cros also recognized Sikora’s album Concertos by awarding it the “Coup de Coeur” prize (read the article about this award here).
Elżbieta Sikora’s catalogue includes over one hundred works, ranging from electroacoustic to instrumental and vocal music, and she continues to accept new commissions all the time. During the 2023-2024 concert season, Sikora’s 80th birthday was celebrated with over thirty concerts in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna, Stockholm, Tallinn, Ljubljana, Oslo, Montreal, São Paulo, Brest and Marseille. Premieres of works such as Tenebrae at the Grand Theatre – National Opera in Warsaw, and a new Overture at the Zielona Góra Philharmonic, as well as jubilee concerts in Wrocław, Gdańsk, Kraków, and Wałbrzych, are taking place throughout the concert season in Poland. These events are coordinated by SONORA Music, the agency representing Elżbieta Sikora, and details of the 2024 concerts are lister here.
Elżbieta Sikora studied electroacoustic music in Paris at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle, and composition in Warsaw, under the guidance of Tadeusz Baird and Zbigniew Rudziński. She was also associated with IRCAM in Paris and CCRMA at Stanford University. She directed the Musica Electronica Nova festival in Wrocław. Her fourth opera, Madame Curie, staged at the UNESCO Grand Auditorium in Paris in 2011, received excellent reviews from the press and audiences, and was presented in France, Poland and in China. Elżbieta Sikora has received numerous composition awards and honors. Her symphonic, electroacoustic, and vocal works are performed by renowned ensembles worldwide.
Elżbieta Sikora’s works have been recorded by Polish Radio, Radio France, WDR and SWR among others. Released on the Anaklasis blue series, her latest monographic album Concertos (ANA 024) received the Coup de Coeur Award and the Choc Classica distinction from French magazine Classica; it was also nominated for the Fryderyk Award 2024 in the ‘Album of the Year: Concert Music’ category. Artists featured on this album included violinist Linus Roth, the NOSPR Orchestra led by José Maria Florêncio, organist Mari Fukumoto, NFM Wrocław Philharmonic conducted by Pascal Rophé, and pianist Adam Kośmieja, accompanied by Sinfonia Varsovia under the baton of Bassem Akiki.
[Sources: press release, elzbietasikora.com, charlescros.org; Photo credit: Bartosz Krupa]