Photog. Rafał Masłow
Aleksander Dębicz
ALEKSANDER DĘBICZ is one of Poland’s most versatile pianists and composers who has presented his own works and improvisations, as well as classical and new music in Poland and abroad. He is a graduate of Warsaw’s Chopin University of Music in the piano class of Prof. Elżbieta Tarnawska.
His 2015 debut album Cinematic Piano featured a cycle of 12 original pieces inspired by films. Since then, Dębicz has composed music for films, radio dramas, and theatrical spectacles, establishing collaborations with Warsaw’s Polish and Jewish Theatres as well as Cracow’s Słowacki Theatre. His music for the Polish Radio drama Anna Karenina was awarded at the Two Theatres festival in 2019.
2018 saw the release of the artist’s third album, Invention, comprising both J.S. Bach’s complete Inventions and Sinfonias and Dębicz’s original works inspired by Bach and hip-hop (2019 Fryderyk
Award nomination).
For his duo collaborations with excellent musicians, Dębicz has developed several original concert programmes combining classical music with improvisation. With cellist Marcin Zdunik, he recorded the highly acclaimed 2CD-album Bach Stories, nominated for the 2018 Fryderyk Award. With saxophone player Szymon Nidzworski, he composed and recorded music for Katarzyna Michałkiewicz’s documentary Dotknięcie (The Touch). Since 2020, Dębicz has performed with Jakub Józef Orliński. Together, they present unusual arrangements of Baroque music as well as original compositions.
Dębicz’s fourth album, Adela (2021), nominated for the 2022 Fryderyk Awards, contains his own works and arrangements recorded in a duo with guitarist Łukasz Kuropaczewski, with guest appearances by countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński.
For his largest original project to date, his latest album Sideways (2022), Dębicz composed works scored for more extensive instrumental forces, including a wind quintet and a string orchestra. The programme also includes his unique interpretations of two classical pieces by Bach and Gershwin.
In 2022, the artist joined Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw for the premiere of Maciej Małecki’s Symphonie concertante, of which he is the dedicatee. In the same year, Dębicz made his debuts at the Duszniki International Chopin Piano Festival (in a duo with Marcin Zdunik) and Męskie Granie (with Jakub Józef Orliński).
The artist’s numerous accolades include the 1st prize in the Transatlantyk Instant Composition Contest, the world’s only competition for simultaneous improvised composition of film music. Dębicz has also won the Spitfire Audio’s 2022 Bridgerton Scoring Competition, in which his composition to a fragment of Netflix series Bridgerton was selected as the best of 4 thousand submitted entries. Since 2024 Dębicz has been under an exclusive recording contract with the international label Warner Classics & Erato.
