Award-winning cellist Ignacy Gaydamovich is an active soloist, recitalist, teacher, chamber musician, researcher, and a recording artist who enjoys performing from a historically informed perspective. Recently, he performed Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Manchester Symphony Orchestra. His latest CD, recorded with his father, Janusz, features unpublished cello works by Lukas Foss and cello works by Schumann and Schubert.
Dr. Gaydamovich regularly performs in Europe, Lebanon, Japan, and the United States, and is a recipient of multiple awards from Austrian, American, and Polish institutions. In 2012 he gave the Albanian premiere of the Korngold Cello Concerto with the National Radio and TV Orchestra of Albania, in Tirana. As an advocate for new music, he gave the American premiere of Cellotronicum for cello and computer by Michal Talma-Sutt, commissioned and premiered a solo work by Alexander Barsov, and appeared on a crossover CD, Cosmospir. He is a founding member of the Atlas Piano Trio and the principal cellist of the Boston Chamber Orchestra. He collaborates with pianists Vyacheslav Gryaznov, Janusz Grzelazka, Judith Gordon, Jiayan Sun, Mohamed Shams, Cihan Yücel, and Rasa Vitkauskaite; with violinists Arkady Fomin, Fernando Vizcayno, and Gary Capozziello; and with cellists Jesus Castro-Balbi and Christopher Adkins.
A passionate teacher and organizer, Dr. Gaydamovich has been a frequent guest at the Conservatory Music in the Mountains in Durango, Colorado. He has also presented master classes at the first middle-east orchestra program in Beirut, as well as at festivals in Japan, Poland, Lithuania, and at several American colleges and schools. He served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam and has been on the cello faculty at Texas Christian University and Mount Holyoke College. In June 1917, he organized the first Amherst (Massachusetts) Cello Camp, and is now the director of Amherst Art Academy. He is on the faculty of Indian Hill Music School, the U Conn Joy Program, and Avon Old Farms School, coaches cello sectionals at Smith College, and is a cellist with the Indian Hill Orchestra.
Dr. Gaydamovich was born into an artistic family and spent his formative years in Poland studying piano, cello, and composition. There he also devoted his time as a music director of the Dzien Smierci Mozarta theater and produced a play for light and shadow after Britten's Suite No. 1. After winning several prizes at international competitions in Austria and Poland, he moved to the United States to continue his graduate studies. There his interests expanded to include conducting.
In addition to performance and pedagogical work Dr. Gaydamovich is the author of a dissertation about Alfred Schnittke's Cello Sonata No. 1, and the cello method book Beyond the Octave, which expands upon the work of Janos Starker. He has lectured on historically informed performance practices relating to the classical cello repertoire. In his spare time, he likes to make arrangements and transcriptions. Thanks to Chabner Family Foundation, Gaydamovich is playing on a modern copy of an Amati The King 1566 cello made by Wojciech Topa and on gut strings with a variety of bows.
Dr. Gaydamovich has received degrees from F. Chopin Music Academy, Texas Christian University, Boston Conservatory, Longy School of Music, and the doctorate from the University of Hartford. He has studied with Terry King, Jesús Castro-Balbi, Rhonda Rider, Andrzej Bauer, and Kazimierz Michalik. Today his teachers include C. P. E. Bach, Leopold Mozart, Clive Brown, Malcolm Bilson, and all the great composers of the past and present.
