ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI

ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI was born in 1958 in Krakow, Poland. He studied composition at the State College of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden, aesthetics of modern music at the University of Gothenburg's Department of Musicology, and computer music at the Chalmers University of Technology. After completing his studies in Sweden, he studied sonology for a year at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Den Haag, Netherlands. During his education, he also attended many summer composition master courses arranged by Centre Acanthes in Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, France, studying with Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, and Georges Aperghis, among others. He works actively as a composer of both acoustic and electroacoustic music. He has written pieces for large orchestra (commissioned and performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra), plus an opera and several chamber music pieces that were performed by professional ensembles in Sweden, Poland, and Germany. He is a founding member of the electroacoustic music performance trio "Sensorband." Zbigniew has lived and worked in Tokyo, Japan for the past eight years, and is active in the underground noise scene there.

Karkowski is convinced that it is a responsibility of an artist in the present day to travel and work around the world in order to learn and understand different cultures and traditions and discover truth about ourselves and our planet. He also strongly believes that geographical, political and social exile is a necessary condition for true and honest creation. He is not interested in the traditional definition of music, in his opinion, all musical theory and systems as cultural concepts must be destroyed. In his latest work, his main concern is to realize drama with sound—electronic and acoustic walls with the architectures of ruins transcribed in the scores.

Karkowski's World As Will II collaboration with Tetsuo Furudate was published through 23five in 2002, and he performed during 23five's Fifth Annual Activating the Medium festival in 2002.