Polish composer Marta Ptaszyńska is among the recipients of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowships, awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The award goes to writers, scholars, musicians and artists “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability”.

Sixty seven year-old Ptaszyńska is a renowned composer, percussionist and teacher of composition. She studied and started her artistic activity in Poland. In the 1970s she settled in the United States, where she has developed a fine international career. Her commissions have included those from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, the Polish Chamber Orchestra and Sinfonia Varsovia. Since 1998 she has held the Helen B.& Frank L. Sulzberger Chair in Composition at the University of Chicago.

She currently works on a composition which will have its premiere on 4 September simultaneously in Warsaw, London, Paris and Shanghai. The ‘4Cities4Chopin’ project is to be a symbolic tribute to Chopin by the inhabitants of those towns, 200 years after the composer’s birth. (mk)