Krzysztof Herdzin, a Professor of Musical Arts, was born in Bydgoszcz in 1970, where he graduated from the Academy of Music in 1993 in the piano class of Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń. He is arguably the only artist in Poland to seamlessly combine intensive activity across classical, jazz, and pop music – excelling in multifaceted roles that demand entirely distinct skill sets and expertise. He operates successfully as a contemporary music composer, film music orchestrator, arranger, symphony conductor, jazz pianist, chamber musician, songwriter, record producer, and academic lecturer.
As a classical pianist and conductor, he has performed with numerous orchestras, and has given chamber music concerts alongside clarinettist Wojtek Mrozek, world-renowned violinists Vadim Brodsky and Mariusz Patyra, saxophonist Paweł Gusnar, and outstanding Polish flautists Jadwiga Kotnowska and Agata Igras. In the pop and jazz spheres, Herdzin has collaborated with virtually all of Poland’s biggest stars. During the 1990s, he played in Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski’s quartet, spent six years as the pianist for Zbigniew Namysłowski’s quartet, performed in a duo with Edyta Geppert from 2002 to 2012, and led Anna Maria Jopek’s band between 2011 and 2021. His prolific career includes a discography of over 200 CDs – including 25 of his own auteur albums – and his extensive work as an arranger has been recognized with 19 Gold and 4 Platinum Discs.
Notably, he served as the orchestrator and arranger for Jan A.P. Kaczmarek’s score for the film Finding Neverland, which won an Academy Award in 2005. He has orchestrated more than a dozen film scores for other prominent Polish composers and has served as the musical director for numerous productions at musical theatres and opera houses in Warsaw, Poznań, Łódź, Kraków, and Bydgoszcz. His conducting credits span over 50 orchestras worldwide, including the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Zhejiang Symphony Orchestra, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR), the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, the Polish Radio Orchestra, Sinfonia Iuventus, and the Beethoven Academy Orchestra. Notably, he made history as the first Polish composer to record an auteur album at London's famous Abbey Road Studios, conducting the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
His compositional output includes several dozen contemporary classical works written for various instrumental ensembles, and he is a regular participant in the commissioning programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
A ten-time Fryderyk Award nominee, he won the prestigious statuette in 2012, and he is a thirteen-time winner of the Jazz Top poll in the Arranger of the Year category. In November 2025, his monumental contributions to Polish music were officially recognized when he was awarded the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for Merit to Culture.
