Listen“Behind perfect technique, musicianship, and presentation ... Lidia Kaminska has in her a great power that influences the audience immensely.”
Prof. Bogdan Dowlasz,
Dean of the Lodz Academy of Music, Poland
Bio
Accordionist Lidia Kaminska, the winner of Astral Artistic Services’ 2007 National Auditions, has performed extensively in both the U.S. and Europe. Her chamber music, concerto, and solo performances explore the complex and expressive range of the accordion as a classical instrument, and her repertoire includes a broad range of classical, contemporary, and avant-garde music. Ms. Kaminska conceived her first album, Breaking Boundaries, as part of her mission to change the perception of the accordion from parlor entertainment to a serious classical instrument; Philadelphia Magazine claims “she transforms the accordion into a massive force — more pipe organ than squeezebox — and burns through [classical repertoire] with virtuosic speed and technique.”
Ms. Kaminska began playing the accordion at the age of eight. By eleven she was competing in international competitions in Bulgaria and Germany, and just a year later gave solo performances in Holland, Austria, and Germany, as well as in her native Poland. Upon receiving a Masters degree from the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, she came to the U.S. to study at the University of Missouri/Kansas City; at 25 she became the first (and only) person in the U.S. to receive a Doctorate in Accordion Performance.
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Ms. Kaminska received First Prize in the 2002 Accordion Teachers Guild International Competition in Orlando, Florida, the Special Prize in New York City’s International Tango Music Competition, with the Argentine tango ensemble Tango Lorca, and recently received Second Prize at the 2007 Coupe Mondiale International Competition for Ensemble Music. She has researched and performed the works of Astor Piazzolla extensively. Also possessing a special interest in new music, Ms. Kaminska has premièred works by Julia Alford Fowler and Paul Rudy, and has appeared with the contemporary music ensembles New Ear and Musica Nova. She has also performed with both the Owen/Cox Dance Group and at the world première of BalletX; she went on to collaborate with Mathew Neenan of BalletX, and with dancer/choreographer Jorge Laico, for Pennsylvania Dance Theatre.
Ms. Kaminska has been a featured soloist with the Kielce Philharmonic Orchestra of Poland, the Strings of Lodz, the Concord Chamber Orchestra, the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, and the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra. Recently, she was presented at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Philadelphia Magazine also featured her in its 2006 Best of Philly issue, and her interview with Marty Moss-Coane was recently broadcast on WHYY and NPR.
This spring marked Ms. Kaminska’s debut on the bandoneón, at New York’s Lincoln Center. The Haddonfield Symphony also features her as soloist in Piazzolla’s Aconcagua concerto for bandoneón in May 2008.