Born in Warsaw, one of the most important personalities in Polish contemporary music ,Ptaszynska is also one of the best known Polish women composers. Her vast catalogue of compositions includes well-known works such as Concerto for Marimba, A Winter’s Tale, Sonnets to Orpheus, Voice of the Winds for 100 Percussionists, and operas Oscar of Alva, Mister Marimba, Magic Doremik , and opera on Chopin in Majorca, as well as numerous regularly-performed compositions for percussion. Ptaszyńska has received commissions from orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Polish Radio National Orchestra NOSPR , Sinfonia Varsovia, and Polish Chamber Orchestra, and artists such as Ewa Podleś, Keiko Abe, and Evelyn Glennie.
Ptaszyńska has been honoured with many prizes and awards, including the 2006 Benjamin H. Danks Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Alfred Jurzykowski Award, multiple ASCAP Awards, the International Rostrum of Composers award (UNESCO, Paris), and awards from the Percussive Arts Society and the Związek Kompozytorów Polskich (ZKP, ‘Polish Composers’ Union’). In 1995 she received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and in 2022 the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for outstanding achievements in music.
Ptaszyńska’s music has been performed at prestigious international festivals, including ISCM World (New) Music Days, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival , Salzburger Festspiele, Warsaw Autumn International New Music Festival, and many others.
In her native Poland, Ptaszyńska studied composition, music theory, and percussion at the Warsaw and Poznań academies of music. She also worked privately with Witold Lutosławski, who later became her mentor. As a French Government grant recipient, she studied with Nadia Boulanger in the early Seventies, and attended Olivier Messiaen’s analysis classes at the Paris Conservatory. In 1974, she received an Artist Diploma Degree in Percussion Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she worked with Cloyd Duff, Richard Weiner and Donald Erb.
Widely acclaimed as a virtuoso percussionist, for several decades Ptaszyńska has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber player, and has participated in many European and American festivals. Many compositions have been written for and dedicated to her. In 1986 she co-founded the International Percussion Workshops in Bydgoszcz, Poland. She also often serves as a judge at international and national competitions for composers and percussionists.
Ptaszyńska’s distinguished career as a composition teacher includes professorships at Bennington College in Vermont, the University of California in Berkeley and Santa Barbara, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Indiana University Bloomington and Northwestern University in Evanston. In 1998 she was appointed professor of music at The University of Chicago, and since 2004 holds an endowed chair of Helen B. & Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of Music and the Humanities.
From 1965 to 1970 Ptaszyńska was a president of the Young Composers’ Circle of the ZKP, and from 1981 to 1984 served as a member of the board of directors of the Percussive Arts Society. In 1991 she co-founded the American Society of Polish Music in New York, and was subsequently vice president for several years. She is currently a member of Union of Polish Composers, ASCAP in the US and ZAIKS in Poland, and he Percussive Arts Society.
In 2002 Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne (PWM) released a book about her music entitled Music, the Most Perfect Language: Conversations with Marta Ptaszyńska. In 2024 PWM released the second book entitled “The Power of Intuition” about Ptaszynska’s music and overall work.
In Ptaszynska’s music modernity and tradition are not contradictory categories, but woven together in a natural way. It is worth emphasising that she continues the aesthetic tradition of Polish music, creating a style where you can find elements of spiritual kindship with great Polish composers : Chopin, Karlowicz Szymanowsk , and Lutoslawski.