Global Best Creative Awards Hall of Fame - Anna Kijanowska · Małgorzata Kaniowska · Małgorzata Łuszczak

La collaborazione creativa tra la pianista Anna Kijanowska, la direttrice d’orchestra Małgorzata Kaniowska e l’artista visiva Małgorzata Łuszczak rappresenta un potente esempio di arte interdisciplinare contemporanea, in cui musica, immagine e concetto convergono per formare un linguaggio artistico unitario.

Al centro di questa collaborazione si trova Hortus Urbis, un concerto per pianoforte commissionato al compositore Thomas Fortmann. Ideata come parte del progetto Silesia – New Eden, l’opera unisce musica, arti visive e nuove tecnologie per raccontare la trasformazione della Slesia, dal suo passato industriale alla sua identità contemporanea come regione plasmata dalla cultura, dalla scienza e dalla consapevolezza ecologica.

Attraverso il pianismo espressivo di Anna Kijanowska, la direzione musicale visionaria di Małgorzata Kaniowska e l’interpretazione visiva evocativa di Małgorzata Łuszczak, Hortus Urbis si rivela come qualcosa di più di un semplice concerto. Diventa una dichiarazione artistica immersiva, che riflette la memoria collettiva, la rigenerazione urbana e l’evoluzione del rapporto tra l’umanità e il suo ambiente.

Questa profondità di integrazione artistica e chiarezza concettuale ha valso al progetto il Diamond Prize – Best Music of the Season e ne ha sancito l’ingresso nella Global Best Creative Awards – Hall of Fame. Il riconoscimento celebra non solo l’eccellenza tecnica, ma anche l’impegno condiviso dei creatori verso la collaborazione, l’innovazione e una narrazione culturale significativa sulla scena globale.

Małgorzata Łuszczak

Artist, Doctor of Humanities, Professor of Arts. Graduate of the Faculty of Arts and Educational Science in Cieszyn at the University of Silesia in Katowice.

She creates interdisciplinary works in the fields of drawing, printmaking, animation, spatial actions, and digital media. She combines classical tools with digital print and augmented reality (AR).

For years, she has been conducting research on the possibilities of perception and the impact of digital tools on creation, beginning with observations of the natural and cultural landscapes.

She understands artistic creation as a kind of game, more often a dialogue with the environment, and creative work as a method of studying, exploring, interpreting, and creating reality. Using digital tools, she creates images inspired by the diversity of the landscape, analysing its permanence, unpredictability, and cyclicity resulting from nature, as well as the variability caused by human interference.

The most frequently explored themes include the landscape as a space shared by various users who adapt to it or adapt it to themselves, light as an element of communication and a source of perceptual wanderings, and the aspects that escape control.

Author of over a dozen articles and editor of 24 publications related to contemporary art, published in Poland and abroad.

Manager and participant of over a dozen international and national artistic-educational projects promoting digital media and their use in art education, including: Camille Claudel I, II and III (Socrates Programme), ITAE – Intervention Through Art Education (Creative Europe), Festival of Art Independent Games – LAG (Creative Europe), GAME LAB - International Laboratory for Game Design and Study (NAWA), Art Beyond Borders (four editions, Interreg CZ–PL).

Professionally affiliated with the University of Silesia and the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava (Slovakia), as well as the German computer game production company TopWare.

During over forty years of work at the University of Silesia, she has held numerous positions, including:

· Director of the Institute of Art,

· Dean of the Faculty of Arts in Cieszyn,

· Two-term member of the Senate of the University of Silesia in Katowice,

· Chair of the Pro Scientia et Arte Award Committee of the University of Silesia in Katowice,

· Director of the GAME LAB Research Centre.

She has presented her works in 30 solo exhibitions and participated in over 500 print competitions and group exhibitions across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Her works have been reproduced in over 40 publications issued in Poland and abroad.

Recipient of numerous awards and distinctions for artistic work, organisational activity, innovative teaching, international cooperation, and the promotion of culture in Silesia.

Małgorzata Maria Kaniowska

(MBA, dr hab., Associate Professor at Univesity of Silesia in Katowce/Poland) - conductor, composer, cultural animator, and educator. Founder and artistic director of the "Camerata Impuls" Chamber Orchestra, with which she has completed numerous concerts and phonographic projects, both in Poland and abroad. As a conductor, she has participated in many international and national festivals, including the Laboratory of Contemporary Music (Warsaw), the "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music, the International Festival of Viennese Music (Wrocław), and the International Festival of Chamber and Organ Music (Leżajsk).

The album Ryterband: The Journey, in which she participated as a conductor, received the Sélection ClicMag! Distinction from the French magazine "ClicMag" and the "Global Music Award" – "Gold Medal – Best of Show" in 2023.

She is the author of several publications in the field of conducting pedagogy and interpretation, as well as liner notes for album recordings, including Ryterband – The Journey, by Wojciech Łukaszewski and Paweł Łukaszewski (Polish Choral Lyric). She has participated in numerous international scientific conferences, including those held in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Portugal, and Israel. She has given lectures on the interpretation of contemporary Polish music at Evora University (Portugal) and the College of Music, Mahidol University in Bangkok (Thailand), among others. She is the organiser and originator of many educational events for children and youth. She is the co-author of the creative workbook for children titled Fortepian, czyli gra faktury (The Piano, or the Game of Texture). Her own compositions filled the album accompanying this publication.

She is also the composer of the Hejnał Miasta Bytomia (Bytom City Trumpet Call), written to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the city's foundation. After being accepted by the heraldry commission of the Ministry of Interior and Administration and the City Council, it officially became the city's bugle call in 2004.

Her works have been performed, among other places, during the "Silesian Days of Contemporary Music" festival in Katowice and in the United States (Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music). Her composition, Mazurka Pastiche No. 1, was recorded on the CD "21st Mazurkas – Anna Kijanowska" (DUX 2025).

Małgorzata Maria Kaniowska's interests also include creative interactions of sound with image. She is the author of the sound design for works including the 3D animation by Prof. Małgorzata Łuszczak, Wiosna (Spring) and Lato (Summer) from the cycle "Pory życia" (Stages of Life) (presented at the 13th Asia Forum on Graphic Science [AFGS 2021], organised by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China).

Anna Kijanowska

The Polish-American pianist Anna Kijanowska (key-en-OFF-ska) has established herself as a multi faceted musician, smoothly transitioning among her roles as a performing and recording artist, pedagogue, coach, and advocate of contemporary classical music around the world. She has performed, taught and collaborated in North and South America, Asia, Europe, New Zealand, Africa and Australia.  

Hailed by The New York Times (2007) as "an excellent young Polish pianist Kijanowska’s concert performances represent the stunning diversity of today’s globalized classical music scene; she is equally at home performing in Carnegie Hall as the steppes of Mongolia. Her New York debut took place in 1997 with a live broadcast over WQXR, and she has to date appeared in Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall (NYC), and the Kennedy Center and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, as well as in underserved venues such as the Amazon basin in Brazil, the Himalayas in Nepal, and Mongolia.

Kijanowska’s recording of The Complete Mazurkas by Szymanowski (Dux) was recently praised by Adrian Corleonis of Fanfare Magazine "as superior to any other interpretations that came before or after her" and received favorable reviews on both sides of the Atlantic from the New York Times and BBC Magazine. 

As a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, she has appeared in major festivals in Europe and USA, including the Kiev Festival and the Polish Composers Festival under the patronage of Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, as well as at the Washington International Piano Festival, InterHarmony Festival in Italy, Quartet Program at Bucknell University and SUNY Fredonia in New York. She has collaborated on these projects with several other renowned musicians, including violinists Charles Castleman, Sharon Roffman, and Ayano Ninomiya of Ying Quartet, pianist Blair McMillen of the Da Capo Chamber Players, and jazz pianist Leszek Możdżer. She has also been heard on WQXR in NYC, WNYC in New York, Chicago Radio, Radio New Zealand, SBS National Public Broadcasting in Australia, and has performed for television audiences in Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand.

As an internationally recognized music educator, Kijanowska has been invited to present master classes, recitals and lectures at leading universities and conservatories around the world, including the Central Conservatory and the the Chinese Conservatory in Beijing, the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou, China, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music at the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and LaSalle College of Arts in Singapore, Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany, Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Sydney Konservatorium, New Zealand School of Music at the Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand, Australian National University in Canberra, Yayasan Pendidikan Musik Conservatory in Jakarta, Indonesia, North-West University in South Africa, the Conservatory in Lima, Peru, St. Thomas University in the Philippines, the Universities of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Virginia and California, Bard College in New York, Yale and Harvard University in Cambridge, among others.

Ms. Kijanowska began her musical education in Bielsko-Biała, Poland and she attended the Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice, under the tutelage of Prof. Jozef Stompel. After receiving her Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the Music Academy in Wrocław, she was awarded a scholarship to study with Dr. Madeleine Forte (pupil of Alfred Cortot, Rosina Lhevinne and Wilhelm Kempff) at Boise State University in the United States. She holds a Doctorate and a Master of Music in Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where she studied with Byron Janis (pupil of Vladimir Horowitz and Rosina Lhevinne), Mykola Suk (pupil of Lev Vlasenko), Sara Davis Buechner (pupil of Rudolf Firkušný and Mieczysław Munz) and Marc Silverman. 

Ms. Kijanowska is currently a faculty member at the Silesian University in Cieszyn and is former faculty member of the College of William and Mary, Richmond University in Virginia. She is a former faculty member of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, the

University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and the Levine School of Music in Washington D.C.