MARCYN DYLLA
Hailed by Washington Post as “among the most gifted guitarists on the planet” Polish guitarist, Marcin Dylla is a rare phenomenon in the recent history of Classical Guitar. Many music critics, connoisseurs, and music lovers certify that Marcin Dylla is among the world’s elite of classical guitar players. He has earned this position, among others, to the unparalleled number of awards including 19 First Prizes from 1996-2007 at the most prestigious international music competitions around the world. His last triumph was the Gold Medal of the ‘2007 Guitar Foundation of America International Competition’ in Los Angeles known as the most prestigious guitar contest in the world followed by a tour of over 50 cities in North America, Mexico and Canada during 2008-09 season, live recital video recording for Mel Bay Publications and CD recording for Naxos that reached the Naxos ‘Top 10 Bestselling Albums’ in September 2008. His live recital DVD “Wawel Royal Castle at Dusk” was nominated for 2010 Fryderyk Award (equal to American Grammy) in the category of Solo Classical Music Album of the Year.
Mr Dylla made his Concertgebouw recital debut in November 2016 during a busy 2016/2017 season where he was also the appointed faculty in residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for the Fall 2016 semester. Recent tour highlights included return invitations to Mexico, Chile, and recitals throughout Asia including Japan in Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, and Hokkaido. Regular recital invitations in the U.S. have taken Mr Dylla to Cincinnati, Lexington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sonoma, Cleveland, New York, Utah, Miami, Boston, New Jersey, and Seattle. In Europe, extensive tours take him regularly to the U.K., Norway, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and Italy where he returned to serve on the distinguished jury panel of the 42nd edition of Michele Pittaluga’s International Classical Guitar Competition.
Mr Dylla’s orchestral engagements included subscription concerts with the Warsaw Philharmonic conducted by Christian Arming performing two concerti (Ponce’s Concierto del Sur and Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez) on two consecutive nights, in addition to recitals throughout Europe every year. In the U.S., he performed as a soloist with the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra during their new music director search.
In 2006, Cecilia Rodrigo, daughter of the legendary Spanish composer, Joaquin Rodrigo, chose Mr Dylla to perform the world premiere of a lately discovered new guitar work by her father entitled ‘Toccata’ (1933) at Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art in Madrid. In 2002, at the 7th International Guitar Convent in Alessandria, he was granted a “gold guitar” musical critics’ award for the best coming young guitar player.
Marcin Dylla was born in Chorzow in 1976 and received his first guitar lessons at the Ruda Slaska Music Conservatory in his native Poland. From 1995 to 2000 he studied at the Music Academy of Katowice with Adi Wanda Palacz and later completed his studies with Oscar Ghiglia, Sonja Prunnbauer and Carlo Marchione at the Music Academies of Basel (Switzerland), Freiburg (Germany) and Maastricht (The Netherlands), respectively. He is currently a Professor of Guitar at the Music Academy in Katowice and Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.
