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Norbert Palej
Assistant Professor, Composition
BMus (New England), MMus (Juilliard), DMA (Cornell)
email: norbert.palej@utoronto.ca
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Hailing from Cracow, Poland, Norbert Palej received his doctoral degree in composition from Cornell University in 2008, where he studied with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. His dissertation examined and contextualized the symphonic poems of the early-20th-century Polish composer Mieczyslaw Karlowicz. Palej was awarded a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where he worked with Christopher Rouse, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied under the guidance of Michael Gandolfi. Previously, Palej studied with Zbigniew Bujarski at the Academy of Music in Krakow, and with Mark Polishook at Central Washington University. He also majored in psychology and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.
Palej’s works have been performed at Ozawa Hall (Tanglewood Music Center), at Alice Tully Hall, at the Caramoor Music Center, at the Liszt Academy (as part of the Budapest Fall Festival), in Aspen’s Harris Hall, at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, and in Boston’s Jordan Hall. His works have been performed by ensembles such as the Sinfonietta Orchestra of Krakow, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, L’Ensemble Fusions (Montreal), the Diaphonia Quintet (Germany), the Quartet Bellezza, Muzyka Centrum (Poland), the Cornell Wind Ensemble, the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, the Royal Air Force Band (London), and by renowned artists including Paolo Bellomia, Jean-Philippe Tremblay, Frédéric Lacroix, Christian Vachon, Linda Larson, Cynthia Johnston-Turner, Jan Pilch, Richard Faria, Marnie Breckenridge, Joseph Lin, Vesselin Gellev, Stefan Asbury and Xak Bjerken.
Commissioned works include a double concerto for violin and viola for the Cantus Firmus Society (Montreal), an opera, Cyberflute, for the Farrell Merit Foundation, Canzona III, for the Cornell Wind Ensemble, and incidental music for Coriolanus, Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter's Tale commissioned by Shakespeare & Co., as well as music for The Woman from the Sea, composed for the Terry Schreiber studios (New York).
Palej participated in the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, and the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and Composer Institute. He received the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Robbins Family Prize in Music Composition, the Toru Takemitsu Award from the Japan Society in Boston, the Benjamin Britten Memorial Fellowship for the Tanglewood 2000 season and the Susan and Ford Schumann Fellowship for the 2001 master class at the Aspen Festival of Music. In previous seasons he participated in the Academy for New Music and Audio-Art in Tyrol, Austria, in the International Workshops for Contemporary Music Krakow/Stuttgart and in the “Treffen Junger Komponisten” in Weikersheim, Germany.
In addition to composing, Palej is a pianist and conductor. He has performed his piano works in many recitals in Europe and North America, and he served as the director of the Cornell Chamber Choir, and the assistant conductor of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra. As an orchestral conductor he specializes in the performance of contemporary music.
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