A Brief Bio...

Mark Nowakowski is an emerging composer who is garnering
performances across the United States and in Europe. A
proud native of Chicago, he completed his formal studies at
the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of Colorado,
and Illinois State University, from which he graduated with
honors in both Music Composition and Arts Technology.

In the spring of 2009, he served as a Guest Lecturer and adjunct
instructor at the Jagiellonian University's Transatlantic Studies
Institute. In 2008, he served as the composer-in-residence for the
Canton Symphony Orchestra. He is a member of "Multimode
Filter," an electronic music composer collaboration. He is also
the music coordinator for the Foundation for Sacred Arts.

His Via Lucis for string orchestra was selected by the Cleveland
Chamber Symphony as part of their 2008 Young and Emerging
Composers Competition Concert. Recent commissions include a
forthcoming work for the Cracow Brass Quintet, the children's
piece Maysong for the Canton Symphony Orchestra,
A Song for Lucy for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History,
My Judas Kiss for the ISU Wind Symphony, and Proximities,
commissioned by Dr. Paul Nolen and premiered at the 2008 North
American Saxophone Alliance National Conference. He has
attended the Krakow Summer Academy of Music, the MusicX
festival, and the UNL Chamber Music Institute for which he
composed the piano trio Reaching. In 2008 he received the
Cleveland Institute's Donald Erb Award for outstanding achieve-
ment in composition, while also being a finalist for the ASCAP
Morton Gould award. He was a first place winner at the 2002 ISU
Arts Technology Annual.

The son of Polish immigrants, Mark's music derives a great deal
of its experiential and aesthetic influence from the bicultural
experience. Philosophically and spiritually, he is deeply influenced
by the long history of Catholic Mysticism, and is always seeking
the transcendent elements which must be present in truly useful
art...