Chair of Choir and Vocal Conducting

The Chair of Choir Conducting was founded in April 1976. Its Head was Prof. Józef Bok who held this function until October 1996. After him, the Chair was headed by Prof. R. Zimak (1996-1999), Prof. A. Banasiewicz (1999-2002), Prof. K. Kusiel - Moroz (2002-2005), Prof. R. Zimak (2005-2008), and Prof. B. Gola (2008-2020).
The CCC deals with topics connected with the sound of a vocal ensemble and topics related to interpretation of vocal and vocal-and-instrumental works from different time periods.As part of its conference activity, during its first years of functioning it organised the All-Poland Discussions for Conducting Teachers and later on academic sessions for conductors of secondary school choirs in collaboration with the Centre of Artistic Education. For many years, the Chair was responsible for content-related supervision of cyclical Festivals of Music School Choirs from the Warsaw Region in Ciechanów.
The Chair’s activity is international. One of the first initiatives was the concert of choir works by Claudio Monteverdi performed by students of the Department of Music Education of the FCAM conducted by Wolfgang Bruneder (Austria). Since 2014, it has regularly held International Conferences entitled “A Conductor’s Personality” and so far, over 30 performers from around a dozen countries have had presentations during these conferences. It has also organised seminars and academic sessions featuring outstanding choirmasters, such as Brady Alred, Vytautas Miškinis, Ko Matsushita, or Thomas Caplin.
In 1996, as part of artistic activity of the Chair, a cycle of concerts was created under the name Choir Music Interpretations. The performers have been various choir ensembles presenting interesting and stylistically varied repertoire. During the Chopin Year, the cycle featured choirs from music academies from Cracow, Katowice and Wrocław. An important foreign appearance was the concert of the Jauna Muzika choir from Vilnius.