Mak Grgić (SLO/USA) and Mateusz Kowalski (POL)
Mak Grgić
Touted as a “gifted young guitarist” by the New York Times, and “a guitarist to keep an eye on” by the Washington Post, 4-time Grammy®-nominated artist Mak Grgić is a star on the worldwide stage. An expansive and adventurous repertoire attests to his versatility and wide-ranging interests. From the ethnic music of his native Balkans to extreme avant-garde and microtonal music, his roles as soloist, collaborator, and Grammy-nominated recording artist are fueled by curiosity, imagination, and boundless energy. As a testament to his versatility and wide-ranging appeal, in 2018 Mak was invited by legendary singer-songwriter k.d. lang to perform as the opening act for the North American leg of her Ingénue Redux Tour.
An avid new music proponent, Mak, has commissioned a multitude of new works for solo guitar and guitar with ensemble. Some of these include works by Michael Gordon, Julia Adolphe, Nina Šenk, Leon Firšt and Cengiz Eren, to name a few. In fall 2022, he premiered and toured a newly commissioned guitar concerto by Michael Abels, composer for the Oscar-winning motion picture Get Out, while future concerto commissions include those by composers Vito Žuraj, Austin Wintory and Christopher Tin.
As both soloist and collaborator, Mak averages fifty performances a year — nearly two bookings per week. He is a founding member in two duos—the Flamenco-style “Duo Deloro” with Adam Del Monte, and the new music-focused “FretX Duo” with Daniel Lippel, guitarist of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). As Young Artist in Residence with the Da Camera Society of Los Angeles, he founded “DC8,” an octet declared “an inspiring addition to the contemporary music landscape in Los Angeles” [Los Angeles Times]. Other collaborations include the JACK Quartet, The Assad Brothers, violinists Augustin Hadelich, Curtis Stewart, Martin Chalifour and Chee Yun, and cellists Jay Campbell, Joshua Roman, John Sant’Ambrogio, and Clive Greensmith, formerly of the Tokyo String Quartet.
In 2009 at the age of 22, Mak made his professional debut in Russia, performing Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Lande. He now makes two regular tours to Asia each season and performs in Europe every other month. Recent engagements include performances and residencies at the Musikverein and the Konzerhaus in Vienna; the Konzerthuset in Stockholm several venues in Portugal; Teatro Cervantes de Bejar in Castilla-Leon/Spain; the Sarajevo Music Academy; several venues in Slovenia; the Paris Guitar Foundation; Zurich University of the Arts; Taipei National Theater; Shanghai Grand Theater; and the Hong Kong International Guitar Festival.
In North America, he has performed at Walt Disney Hall (Los Angeles); The Morgan Library; The Kennedy Center; the National Gallery of Art; NAMM Show (California); Strathmore Hall (Maryland); the New York Classical Guitar Society; the Pacific Symphony; Mainly Mozart (San Diego); Beyond Microtonal Music Festival (Pittsburgh); the Dallas Opera for performances of Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse; Dumbarton Concerts (Washington, D.C.); the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and numerous other venues and guitar societies across the globe.
Highlights of the 2024/2025 season include appearances with the Pacific Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Boise Philharmonic, Sedona Symphony and the East Coast premiere of “Borders,” by Michael Abels with the American Composers Orchestra in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.
An enthusiastic recording artist, Mak’s albums capture a probing and continuous exploration of the world of guitar and all its possibilities. His most recent album “Entourer” is a celebration of Slovenian music, bringing to life the work of Slovenian composers Leon Firšt and Nina Šenk, for which it received a Grammy® nomination. Together with the Ensemble Dissonance strings group, the music ranges from classical to ethnic to avant-garde. Other recent recordings, “Balkanisms" for Naxos Music plus “MAKrotonal” and Grammy®-nominated “Mak|Bach” for MicroFest Records, explore a vast repertoire spanning ethnic music, microtonal, new music and early music on re-fretted instruments, such as a “zig-zag fretted Bach prototype guitar” that allows him to create a “well-tempered guitar” for “Mak|Bach.” Mak is also featured on another Naxos release, “La Buena Vida” with flamenco guitarist Adam del Monte. Other albums include a Grammy-nominated project “A Night in Upper Town – the Music of Zoran Krajačić on Roundtone; “Peaceful Guitar” on Symphonic, Mak’s first recording of his own compositions; and an upcoming all-concerto recording for Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez,” Abels’ “Borders,” and “The Beatz” by Leon Firšt with the Slovenian National Radio Symphony.
Also, an active entrepreneur and educator, Mak has been a member of the leadership teams of several organizations including the European Guitar Festival Collaborative (EuroStrings), the Zagreb Guitar Festival, and the Connecticut Guitar Festival. He served as an adjunct faculty member at Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, and was a director of Elemental Guitar in Santa Monica, a program designed especially for young people. In 2022, he founded “Notey's World” and the company Notey Inc, to develop a unique game for tablets and smart phones intended to popularize music learning and make it more fun. As a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, he founded the Virtual Guitar Orchestra, gathering more than 5000 guitarists from more than 50 countries to date. VGO is a community-oriented project, recognized by the Library of Congress for its cultural contributions, and has also formed collaborations with the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and the Augustine Educational Foundation, to help ensembles be active virtually.
Born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1987, Mak studied guitar in Zagreb with the revered Ante Čagalj at the Elly Bašić Music Academy. By the age of 14, he was balancing his world champion status in karate with his love for the guitar. Following an injury to his left thumb, he made the decision to focus on a career in music, going on to complete a bachelor’s degree with Alvaro Pierri at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, and a Master’s and Doctorate degrees at USC in Los Angeles with Brian Head, William Kanengiser and Scott Tennant. In the fall of 2017, he began the Artist Diploma program at USC, the first guitarist in the university’s history to be admitted to this elite program. Mak currently holds a full-time teaching position at University of South Carolina.
Mak plays and endorses an array of outstanding concert guitars made by diverse craftsmen, including German luthier Antonius Müller, the Chinese master Hanson Yao, Bosnian Slavko Mrdalj, Slovenian Samo Šali, Polish Rafal Turkowiak, a 1966 José Ramírez, as well as other re-fretted and remodeled guitars.
Mak Grgic is also proud to be involved with the Bosana Foundation, an organization that raises money for Bosnian youth. He also regularly awards education-furthering scholarships to select students across South America.
“…a superb, finely detailed reading that showed Grgić is a guitarist to keep an eye on.”
Mateusz Kowalski is one of the most outstanding guitarists of the young generation, touted by Classical Guitar Magazine as a "spectacular" musician who performs a vast repertoire ranging from the renaissance to contemporary works with remarkable expertise, stylistic sensitivity, and great musical culture.
He has performed in some of the most prestigious concert halls around the world, including the Musikverein in Vienna and the Shanghai Grand Theatre, captivating audiences in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and London. His performances have been heard in over 20 countries. Kowalski gained recognition for the first-ever live performance of Fryderyk Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor arranged for guitar and orchestra. The premiere took place during the "Chopin and His Europe" festival in 2023 with {Oh!} Orchestra conducted by Martyna Pastuszka.
Kowalski is the winner of prestigious competitions, including the 2nd EuroStrings International Competition in London - a contest open only to the winners of the most significant European guitar competitions. Kowalski has already released several albums, both as a soloist and chamber musician. The most notable of these - "Polish Romantic Guitar" was premiered in 2021. These recordings were produced in collaboration with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. This project significantly contributed to the popularization of the works of Bobrowicz, Horecki, Szczepanowski, and Sokołowski, of which Kowalski is a passionate advocate.
The artist collaborates with many distinguished musicians such as Martyna Pastuszka, Vaclav Luks, David Garrett, Marek Pasieczny, and Tomasz Radziszewski.
Mateusz Kowalski was born in 1995 in Koszalin, Poland. He began learning to play the guitar at the age of seven and studied for the next 12 years under the guidance of Dariusz Schmidt at the Grażyna Bacewicz State Music School Complex in Koszalin. He later graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in the class of Ryszard Bałauszko, receiving the Magna cum Laude medal. He has honed his skills in numerous masterclasses with renowned musicians such as Sergio Assad, Oscar Ghiglia, and Alvaro Pierri. One of the most important ones remains the Konzertexamen in Darmstadt under Tilman Hoppstock.
Alongside his solo career, Kowalski is also active in education, giving masterclasses at festivals around the world. Since October 2019, he has been a lecturer at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
"Young Mr. Kowalski was spectacular,
[...] truly breathtaking!"
CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE
"A true musician. Technically perfect with the ability to make the audience feel attentive and drawn to every note he played, he also showed that he was a musician of the highest calibre with gifts of communication and beauty of sound."
NIGEL NORTH