MARIA POMIANOWSKA
and group ReBorn
in UW Whitewater

Maria Pomianowska is an outstanding multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, teacher and promoter of Polish classical and folk music. Trained as a classical cellist, she is also a master sarangi player cultivating her interests in the music of Far East Asia as professor of the Academy of Music in Kraków - where she opened the first in Poland Faculty of Ethno-Music. She is also an organizer of multi-cultural music programs around the world and director of the Cross-Culture Warsaw Festival. 

In the United States, she promotes the most recent of her 23 recordings entitled "The Voice of Suka." Making it quickly to the top of the prestigious "Top of the World" list by the UK-based Songlines (April 2017), the album features music played on the long forgotten and recently reconstructed Polish knee-supported chordophones: the Biłgoraj suka, the Mielec suka and the Płock fiddle. Many consider these medieval fiddles to be Polish precursors of the modern violin. The all-women group "Reborn" featured in the recording is also the only ensemble using those instruments in different sizes

The style of music in the recording adds another twist to the fascinating story of the instruments' resurrection (the Biłgoraj suka was reconstructed based on the 1896 watercolor by Wojciech Gerson). As we read in the album notes, the "musical postcards" composed by Pomianowska embody climates of traditional Polish music but reverberate with the melodies and rhythms of the Middle and Far East. And in her own words, "... old Polish instruments are capable of conversing in all the languages of the world. Listen here to their sound, reborn – an alphabet for the 21st century."

Presented in Partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York

Location: Young Auditorium
 930 W.Main Street, Whitewater WI 53910

Map: https://goo.gl/maps/oK6xm9qzE5C2