Award-winning conductor Marzena Diakun came to international acclaim in Paris after several concerts with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, an orchestra she continues to collaborate with on a regular basis. Since September 2021 she is the Artistic Director and Principal Chief Conductor of the Orquesta y Coro de la Comunidad de Madrid (ORCAM).
Future engagements include the Suisse Romande Orchestra in Geneva, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the National Orchestras of Metz and Bordeaux and Orchestre Pasdeloup in France, the Hamburg, Bremen and Stuttgart Philharmonics and the Nordwestdeutsche and Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern in Germany.
Diakun is a dedicated supporter of contemporary music and premieres numerous works. In 2016, she gave the Polish premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s opera Lost Highway, as a part of the New Horizons Festival in Wrocław (Breslau). Her release of ‘Polish Heroines’ on PWM, a recording dedicated to Polish women composers followed upon the 10th Symphony by Pierre Henry, on ALPHA.
She finished with distinction the conducting class under Mieczysław Gawronski at the Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wroclaw, followed by postgraduate studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, in Uros Lajovic’s class, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Cracow Academy of Music. Her mentors were conductors Howard Griffiths, Colin Metters, Kurt Masur, Andrey Boreyko, and Pierre Boulez. She is currently a conducting professor at the Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wroclaw. Her prizes and awards include second prize at the prestigious 59th Prague Spring Competition for Conductors in the Czech Republic and the Silver Baton at the 9th Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors in Poland (2012). In 2015, Diakun was a recipient of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Conducting Fellowship at Tanglewood Music Festival and won the Marin Alsop’s Taki Concordia Fellowship. In her home-country, Poland, she has received numerous awards.