NFM Choir & Agnieszka Franków- Żelazny
Biography NFM Choir & Agnieszka Franków- Żelazny
Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny
is one of the most recognized choral conductors in Poland.
She is a Titular Professor of Musical Arts, PhD and an active teacher. She studied voice and conducting at the Academies of Music in Wrocław and Bydgoszcz. She is also a biologist, a graduate of the University of Wrocław and a culture manager with a diploma from the University of Economics in Kraków, as well as MBA studies at the Collegium Humanum at the Central School of Management. She has recorded 22 albums and won over 70 individual and ensemble awards, some of which she received during her studies: 1st prize and two special prizes in the National Competition for Choir Conducting (2004), 1st place in the Lower Silesian Competition Primus Inter Pares (2004). For her artistic and academic activities, she received the Honorary Badge of Merit for Polish Culture (2008), the Wrocław Music Prize (2010), Internauts’ Award in the competition Person of the Year 2011, Award of the Polish Academy of Sciences Iuvenes Wratislaviae (2012), the Bronze Medal for Merit to Polish Culture – Gloria Artis (2014), as well as Fryderyk 2017 and 2019. In 2018, the project Choral Academy, which she programmed, was nominated for the Corypheus of Polish Music Award. In 2018, the project Choral Academy, which she programmed, was nominated for the Corypheus of Polish Music Award.
From 2000–2014, she led the Medici Cantantes the Choir of the Medical University in Wrocław, which she founded. Winning with it the highest prizes in choir competitions in Poland and internationally; she elevated the ensemble to the league of the best university choirs in Poland. From 2006–2021 she was Artistic Director of the National Forum of Music Choir, building it from the very beginning according to her own vision of a “choir of soloists”. She is the originator and Artistic Director of a nationwide educational project established in 2013 under the name of the Polish National Youth Choir.
In January 2015 she was appointed Programme Director of the Choral Academy – a project financed by the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport. Its main objective is to support the development of nearly 300 Polish children’s and youth choirs financially and substantively, organising workshops, concerts, competitions conferences and publishing numerous methodological and repertoire materials. From 2013–2016 she was Curator of Music for the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016, co-implementing an artistic programme consisting of several hundred musical events.
