Tadeusz Biernacki

Tadeusz Biernacki was born in Czestochowa, Poland where he began his music education at the age of four. He won the Karol Szymanowski competition in Warsaw in 1976 and earned his master of music degree in piano performance from the Conservatory of Music in Katowice in 1978. He has performed as a soloist in many European countries. Biernacki settled in Canada in 1978 and continued his piano studies with Marek Jablonski at the University of Manitoba and Banff School of Fine Arts. He studied conducting with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski in Minneapolis.

As a winner of the 1980 Young Artist’s Competition, Biernacki has toured Canada extensively in solo and chamber music recitals. In 1983 he began his association with the Manitoba Opera and in 1988 with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

He made his conducting debut with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in 1992 and has since conducted orchestras in Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Toronto, Windsor and Montreal. He has conducted the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, Cleveland Orchestra, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Grand Forks Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Virginia Symphony Orchestra (USA), Tessaloniki State Orchestra (Greece), Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan) and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. He also conducted the world premieres of the RWB’s Nutcracker, Moulin Rouge, Wonderland, Svengali, The Princess and the Goblin, The Handmaid’s Tale, Going Home Starand Vespers.

His last CD recording, the soundtrack to Going Home Star with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra was awarded a 2017 Juno Award as the Best Classical Album of the Year – Large Ensemble. Biernacki has branched out into composition with his one-act opera, Happy Campers, composed for the Manitoba Opera School Tour, Charlies Kreuzfahrt, a ballet commissioned for the Stadtische Theater Chemnitz in Germany as well as numerous symphonic arrangements and orchestrations for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre, SSO, Memphis Ballet, Memphis Opera, Pittsburg Ballet Theatre and Atlanta Ballet. In addition to his position with the RWB, Biernacki is an Assistant Music Director, Assistant Conductor and Chorus Master of the Manitoba Opera.