Polish organist Piotr Rachoń from Warsaw’s St John Cathedral will present a recital at Washington National Cathedral on Sunday, October 5. Guest organist Rachoń will play a recital on the Cathedral’s 10,650–pipe great organ. His program will include works by Polish composers such as Jan z Lublina (ca. 1530), Jakub Sowa (1545–1593), and Mieczysław Surzyński (1866–1924), as well as Italian and French composers.
Piotr Rachoń is a graduate of the Frederic Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw where he earned two master degrees in music (cum laude), one from the academy’s Piano, Harpsichord, and Organ Department in 1994, and the other from the school’s Church Music Division in 2004. Thanks to a grant from the Italian Government and the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art, he underwent training at the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Sienna in 1994, and in Academie d’Orgue in Saint-Maximin la Sainte-Baume–France in 2009. He is also a 1999 alumnus of the Papal Theological Department’s Institute of Professional Organ Training in Warsaw.
Rachoń leads an active concert life performing as soloist, chamber musician, and accompanist both in Poland and abroad (Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and USA). Among his artistic achievements are CD recordings made in Poland and Germany. Since 2002, Rachoń has been an organist at the Warsaw Archdiocesan Cathedral-Basilica of St. John the Baptist, and since 2006, he has been the cathedral’s principal organist. Currently, he is a lecturer at the Cardinal Wyszyński University. He has also been a member of the Archdiocese of Warsaw’s Church Music Commission since 2004. He is also coorganizer of masterclasses of Italian music on historical, Italian instruments for Polish students (Perinaldo, Val Gerola, Gottro di Carlazzo).
In 2008–2009, Piotr Rachoń, a grantee of the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York and University of Houston, was a doctoral student and teaching assistant in the Organ Department at the University of Houston.
Sunday, October 5, 2014 | 5:15 PM
Polish Organ Music with Piotr Rachoń at Washington National Cathedral
Washington National Cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin and Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC, 20016
$10 suggested donation
Info: www.nationalcathedral.org
[Source: press release]