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GUEST COLLABORATOR BIOSJacek Ostaszewski is a world-renowned composer and musician based in Krakow, Poland, whose professional career dates back to 1964. He is a featured soloist in several films and with various orchestras on flute, recorder, bass, and sansa, and the founder of the world-music ensemble Osjan, which tours Poland and Europe annually. He is an instructor at Krakow's Theater Academy, and has collaborated with Polish groups including Gardzienice, the Grotowski Institute, and Song of the Goat. As a composer, he has eighty plays to his credit, among which fifteen were directed by Krystian Lupa, and performed in Europe and the US, most recently at the American Repertory Theater and NYTW. He also created ballet music for the Beth Soll Dance Company, wrote music for three feature length and five short films, and five television specials. In the late 1980's and early 90's, Ostaszewski adapted Double Edge's Song of Absence and composed the company's Song of Songs, and also composed the music and was the flute soloist for the legendary Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski of Blue, Red. Mira Zelechower-Aleksiun graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Wroclaw in 1966, and has over 80 individual and group exhibitions. Some paintings are included in collections in the Vatican Museum, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Ludvigshaffen, and private collections in Poland and abroad. Her artist's file is housed in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington D.C. Some of her major exhibitions include Heritage - Joys of Torah, at the Myslenice Gallery (Krakow, 2001), Heritage I, at the Nowy Dziennik Gallery (New York, 1995), and Across The Holy Land to The Promise Land (Jerusalem, 1989). Zelechower-Aleksiun has received grants from the Polcul Foundation in 1987 and 1990, and in 2002 from the European Foundation for Jewish Culture. |