Oliwier Andruszczenko (1986) — clarinets, EWI

Clarinettist, saxophonist and showman, frequently performing as BalkanMan; leader of music groups BUM BUM ORKeSTAR and Misz Masz, soloist of the Philharmonic of Humour. He graduated from the Karol Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice after studies with Arkadiusz Adamski (2012) and has also followed prestigious masterclasses with Eduard Brunner, Oriol Romani, Jan Jakub Bokun, Artur Pachlewski, Jean-Marc Fessard, Aleksander Romański, Matthias Müller, Miroslav Hlaváč, Giora Feidman, and the Vienna Clarinet Connection quartet. 

He has given performances throughout Poland as well as in Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Lithuania, and Ukraine. He has worked with many youth orchestras as a soloist and leader of the clarinet section. Since 2007 he has composed and performed Klezmer, Balkan, and Sephardic music. In the last six years he has appeared with Balkan Sevdah, Maayan and PropaBanda at festivals such as Open’er (2011), Woodstock in Poland (2011), Issaac Singer Festival (2007, 2010), Festival of Three Cultures (2011), Simcha Festival of Jewish Culture (2010), Tzadik (2012), One Europe, Many Cultures (2011), Ada Sari (2010), and others. In 2014 he founded his BUM BUM ORKeSTAR. New music plays a major role in Andruszczenko’s artistic life. He has collaborated with the Polish Composers’ Union since 2009. During the 2009 Warsaw Autumn, he took part (together with Magdalena Lisak and Wojciech Błażejczyk) in the performance of sixty one-minute works composed for the 60th anniversary of the Polish Composers’ Union’s Youth Circle. He has given world and Polish premieres of compositions by Włodzimierz Kotoński, Lidia Zielińska, Krzysztof Knittel, Zbigniew Bagiński, Krzysztof Baculewski, Bronisław Kazimierz Przybylski, Prasqual (Tomasz Praszczałek), Dariusz Przybylski, Tomasz Jakub Opałka, Ignacy Zalewski, and Agnieszka Stulgińska. He is a member of the Warsaw Contemporary Ensemble (formerly Scontri Ensemble), the Polish Composers’ Union Youth Circle’s new music group. Since 2014 he has also performed with Hashtag Ensemble. He participates in numerous music productions as a session musician, and is a regular collaborator of theatre companies including the Wałbrzych Puppet and Actor Theatre, Ateneum Puppet and Actor Theatre, Maska Theatre in Rzeszów, and Lalka Theatre in Warsaw.