This Saturday, 11 December at 19:30, a very special concert titled New Sacred Music Laboratory will take place at the Oliwa Cathedral in Gdańsk. Besides pieces by such distinguished artists as Henryk Mikołaj Górecki or Marian Borkowski there will be first performances of the compositions that won awards at the 25^th Musica Sacra Nova International Composers Competition.

The New Sacred Music Laboratory, a new initiative of the Polish Chamber Choir, is an idea through which we want to bring the processes of how interesting and valuable choir music is created to life. This is also the aim of the Musica Sacra Nova competition, which dates back to 1996. Today, with prestigious prizes and a wide range of international partners, the competition enjoys great interest among young composers from all over the world.

The “laboratory” format that we have introduced to our project means that we want to begin and enhance a process of looking for and creating new sounds and new formal solutions (a piece’s construction, vocal scoring and instrumentation). We also want to compare and confront sacred musical works by celebrated contemporary composers, the Laboratory Professors, such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Stanisław Moryto and Marian Sawa with pieces by the youngest Polish composers, the Laboratory Students, born in the second half of the 20^th or even in the 21^st century.

Project carried out in collaboration with National Centre for Culture.

Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage