Slawomir Kowalewski (Slavek)

An award-winning Polish composer and pianist based in Tokyo/Kamakura. His work on major film and broadcast productions includes original scores for NHK, Nihon-TV, Fuji Television, TV Tokyo, and TBS networks, as well as Japan’s top pop act, AKB48, and covers a wide range of musical genres, ranging from full classical orchestral scores to Japanese traditional, piano solo, jazz, electronic, minimal, and avant-garde. Slavek began playing piano at five, but his family’s move from Communist Poland to Western Germany when he was ten was the key factor in expanding his musical horizons beyond the conventional: Slavek played in bands (alternating guitar, drums, and bass), studied the sitar from Shalil Shankar, and produced punk albums, all the while continuing to win prizes for his piano playing. After a single audition, he was accepted into the Conservatory van Amsterdam, where he received a rigorous education in classical music under the tutelage of the great pianist Håkon Austbø. Later, he went on to study counterpoint, orchestration, and scoring for film, from multiple-award-winning composer Jurre Haanstra. Slavek’s original score for Edmund Yeo’s “Kingyo” was celebrated at the Venice Bianalle in 2009 and in 2013 the Brooklyn Film Festival honored him with the award for best score for his inventive work on the quirky sci-fi feature “Sado Tempest.” Both of these projects are ideal examples of Slavek’s skill at synthesizing cross-cultural hybrids, moving freely between classical and contemporary modes, and fusing organic and electronic textures. In 2020 Slavek composed the soundtrack for the Hulu TV-drama “Love you as the world ends” and in 2022 he released another piano solo album called “Reset”. He is also a part-time lecturer for orchestration and arrangement at the renowned Seika University in Kyoto.