PMC Program Director & Curator (2005-present)
Editor-in-Chief, Polish Music History Series (2005-present)
Marek Zebrowski was born in Poznań, Poland, and began studying piano at the age of five. After graduating with the highest honours from the Poznań Music Lyceum, he went to France, where he was a pupil of Robert Casadesus and Nadia Boulanger. Mr. Zebrowski came to the United States in 1973 and continued his studies of piano with Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees. Marek Zebrowski is a Steinway Artist.
Hailed as “firm and eminently musical” by the Boston Globe, “strong and noble” by the Washington Post, and accorded highest accolades by the world press, Marek Zebrowski has appeared extensively as soloist in recital and with symphony orchestras throughout the world. He has recorded works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Scriabin and Prokofiev for the Polish Radio, appeared in Public Television broadcasts in the United States, and recorded works by Ravel and Prokofiev for Apollo Records in Germany. His performances and compositions are also featured on the Titanic Records and Harmonia Mundi labels. A recording of improvisations with the film director, David Lynch, entitled “Polish Night Music” was released in spring of 2008.
Marek Zebrowski is also recognized worldwide as a composer. The catalogue of his compositions includes orchestral and chamber works, piano compositions and transcriptions, and film and stage scores. He has received commissions from Meet The Composer, The New England String Quartet, and Premiere Productions and Central Europe Trust in the United Kingdom, among others. Mr. Zebrowski’s piano composition, Ex tempore, won the Second Prize at the 1997 International Competition in The Hague, Netherlands. During the fall of 1997 Marek Zebrowski was a recipient of the Bogliasco Fellowship in Italy, where he composed two song cycles for baritone and piano. World premieres of his latest compositions took place in the Netherlands and Italy in 1998, Los Angeles in 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2012, South Africa, Germany and the Netherlands in 2005, and Poland in 2011.
In addition to his activities as pianist and composer, Marek Zebrowski has been a frequent lecturer for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Harvard University, and The New England Conservatory of Music, and for several years he has been a contributing writer for the Boston Book Review. Renowned as teacher and interpreter of music, Mr. Zebrowski has given numerous master classes and coached various chamber music ensembles and chamber orchestras. His long academic career has included many years of teaching at the University of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UCLA, as well as guest lecturing at the Osher Learning Institute of Southern California. Currently, Mr. Zebrowski resides in Los Angeles, California where, since 2005, he has served as the Program Director for the Polish Music Center at USC and Editor-in-Chief of the Polish Music History Series. Since 2008, he has also served as the Artistic Director of the Paderewski Festival in Paso Robles, California. He authored Celebrating Chopin & Paderewski, Paderewski in California and several other books about film directors and cinematographers, published by the Tumult Foundation.
Mr. Zebrowski is the 2007 recipient of the Silver Gloria Artis medal from Poland’s Minister of Culture and National Heritage. In 2011 Mr. Zebrowski was recognized with the Telly Award for his score to a documentary film, The Labyrinth, and awarded the Golden Cross of Merit by the President of Poland. In April 2012, together with Lech Wałęsa and Professor Władysław Bartoszewski, Marek Zebrowski was honored by TV Polonia with the Award for the Promotion of Poland and Polish Culture abroad.