About festival

One of the largest, one of the oldest, with a unique reputation. This is ``the Silesian Guitar Autumn`` International Festival in Tychy, the 18th edition of which will be held between 25th and 30th October 2022.
„The guitar is a universal key to the world of music, it is popular, associated with various genres, and it captures attention. With the guitar you can show how rich the world of music is. It functions in many different varieties and styles``, says Marek Nosal, the artistic director of the 18th Silesian Guitar Autumn.
Our main goal is to present the most valuable achievements of modern guitarists and contemporary composers, to show a wide range of guitar music genres, both in terms of the lineup as well as stylistic and historical aspects. We also want to promote the achievements of the most outstanding Polish performers, young talents, and broadly defined Polish music industry.
Municipal Culture Centre in Tychy organises the festival in close cooperation with The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice and partner institutions such as AUKSO Chamber Orchestra or NOSPR (Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra). This way, we assure its high level of content and we care about the attractiveness of the presented programme.

We have invited a total of 161 artists from all over the world - soloists, chamber ensembles, five Polish orchestras and world-class stars to co-create this year's edition. Among them: Adam Del Monte, Enrike Solinis, Erlendis Quartet, Yamandu Costa (Latin Grammy Awards 2021 winner) and Grammy Awards 2022 nominee Mak Grgić. This year, the festival will see three Polish world premiere performances of guitar concertos and a premiere of a piece for guitar and string orchestra by Aleksander Lasoń.

The diversity and variety of the programme is supervised by the artistic director of the festival, Marek Nosal, PhD, an instrumentalist, a professor at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, the dean of the Department of Instrumental Studies of the Academy.
„I sometimes hear that the Silesian Guitar Autumn is a kind of Chopin Competition in the guitar world. This is undoubtedly very pleasant.” says Nosal.

Jan Edmund Jurkowski Memorial Guitar Cempetition past editions winners:

  • 1986 – Nicola Hall (Great Britain)
  • 1988 – Georgi Vasiliev (Bulgaria)
  • 1990 – Alexei Zimakov ( USSR)
  • 1992 – not awarded
  • 1994 – Marcin Siatkowski (Poland)
  • 1996 – Marcin Dylla (Poland)
  • 1998 – Jan Skryhan (Belarus)
  • 2000 – not awarded
  • 2002 – Jeremy Jouve (France)
  • 2004 – Andras Csaki (Hungary)
  • 2006 – Gabriel Bianco (France)
  • 2008 – Andrzej Olewiński (Poland)
  • 2010 – Xingye Li (China)
  • 2012 – Florian Larousse (France)
  • 2014 – Kyuhee Park (South Korea)
  • 2016 – Marko Topchii (Ukraine)
  • 2018 – Chia-Wei Lin (Taiwan)
  • 2022 – Cassie Martin (France)