Ptaszyskas compositions have been featured at many international festivals around the world and at special monographic concerts where her works were either the sole focus of attention or presented with timeless classics such as Beethovens Fifth Symphony. She received commissions from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Wrocaw Philharmonic, Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute, the National Opera of Warsaw, the Grand Opera Theater in d, and a number of festivals. Born in 1943 during World War II in the beleaguered Warsaw, Poland, Ptaszyska studied at the State Highest School of Music in Warsaw (now Fryderyk Chopin University of Music) and, in 1962-68 earned three degrees: in composition (with Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz), percussion (with Jan Zgodziski), and music theory (with Stefan ledziski and Andrzej Dobrowolski). Looking e.g. at a painting of Wassily Kandinsky, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst or Paul Klee, I am able to hear music which I feel already exists in a painting in its "frozen state" or as an immobile form.

I associate such painting with harmonic colors, with specific arrangements of sounds, structures, rhythmic designs, and overall musical form. The composers vast experience as a performer and affinity for percussion sounds and colors informs her musical imagination in unexpected ways. The recurring theme of Orpheus makes a re-appearance in the Drum of Orpheo - Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (1999-2002), written for and dedicated to i Scottish virtuoso percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, who has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12 and has performed barefoot, hearing music through vibrations around her. The presence of geometrical structures and images in Ptaszyskas is an eduring characteristic of her music, as important as that of humanistic themes, or ancient myths, like the story of Orpheus. The combination of sonic allure and structural strength is a principal trait that Ptaszyska shares with Lutosawski and that endowes her music with its lasting value. A book of interviews with Ptaszynska appeared in Poland: Leszek Polony, Ewa Cicho, Music- the Most Perfect Langauge, Conversations with Marta Ptaszyska (Krakw: Polish Music Publications, PWM, 2001). Overviews of Ptaszynskas music include: Dorota Szwarcman, The Colorful World of Marta Ptaszyska, Polish Music, Warszawa, Poland, 1988, vol. The composers stellar academic credentials are coupled with an impressive track record of awards: prizes from the Percussive Arts Society (1974, 1976, 1987), medal from the Polish Composers Union (1988), prize at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (Paris, 1986, for Winters Tale), Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jurzykowski Foundation (1996), ad an "Officer Cross of Merit" of the Republic of Poland (1995). A string of major awards in America includes those bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Benjamin H. Danks Award of 2006), the Fromm Music Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2010). Her music is published by PWM Edition in Poland and Theodore Presser in the U.S.

221 -239; Robert Zierolf, Composers of Modern Europe, in Karin Pendle, ed. She belongs to natomiast rare group of composers endowed with the phenomenon of color hearing or "synaesthesia". Ptaszyskas music may be described as an individual brand of "sonorism" and she names Witold Lutosawski (1913-1994), the grand master of the Polish school of sonorism as her main mentor and inspiration. Such large scale images captured the composers imagination in such works as Inverted Mountain for orchestra (2000), Of Time and Space for percussion, tape and orchestra (2009-2010), and the earlier Mobile for two percussionists (1976), reflecting in music the movable structure of Alexander Calders eponymous sculptures. The composer quotes her work Linear Constructions in Space for six percussionists as a typical example. Spider Walk for percussion solo (1993), or Linear Constructions in Space for six percussionists (1998). The largest percussion extravaganza is her 2008 Street Music for percussion orchestra of 70 players, written for the Pozna Festival "In Celebration of Percussion". This clarity of form and purpose extends to pedagogy: since 1965 she has composed 10 collections of various childrens pieces and co-authored a percussion textbook in five volumes Colorful World of Percussion, with Barbara Niewiadomska, 1993). Her works for children, joining the ranks of the classics such as Ravels Lenfant et les sortilges, include two childrens operas, Mister Marimba (1993-96) that has played to sold-out houses for several years after its Warsaw premiere and the Magic Doremik (2006-07), with a title derived from Do-Re-Mi which indicates a slight pedagogical bend.

These constellations of sounds are generated in the course of the piece through various pitch rotations, transpositions or symmetrical pairings. Obviously, my compositions are not literal descriptions of the paintings, but rather, purely musical reactions inspired from viewing these paintings.rozprawka , light-hearted operas highlight Ptaszyskas fascination with the Far East and the richness of musical traditions around the world. Geometric symmetries and structures like the famous Pythagorean theorem also play decisive roles in the organization of my musical material. Some sounds and harmonic structures seem to convey to my mind some characteristic colors. For me, a very strong sense of color corresponds to chord structures and their harmonic configurations. Let us review an example from Liquid Light, a song cycle to poetry by Modene Duffy, set for soprano and an array of percussion instruments. Ptaszyskas own relationship to percussion instruments is as personal and idiosyncratic as Glennies, but before exploring her unique world, let me review some basic facts of her career.