PhD Marzena Szczepańska-Butler

She graduated from the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław in the piano class of Prof. Włodzimierz Obidowicz, and from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music (now UMFC) in Warsaw in the piano class of Prof. Barbara Hesse-Bukowska, with whom she studied during Postgraduate Studies. She refined her pianistic skills at numerous National and International Master Piano Courses under the guidance of professors: Viktor Mierżanov, Ryszard Bakst, Regina Smendzianka, Eugeniusz Mogilewski, and Aleksander Orłowiecki. In 1993 she obtained the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań. In 2003 she completed Postgraduate Studies in the management of educational and cultural institutions at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław.

Since 1987 she has been employed at the Faculty of Music Education, Choral Studies, and Church Music, where she currently teaches Piano and Accompaniment with Sight-Reading for first-cycle students. From 2001 to 2006 at the Instrumental Faculty she led a piano class for first-cycle students, and since 2007 she has taught the subject Literature of the Major Instrument (Piano) for second-cycle students. She has been both supervisor and reviewer of bachelor’s and master’s theses. From 2001 to 2017 she coordinated the General Piano Section at the Department of Piano of the Wrocław Academy, within which she organized and led numerous artistic events activating the broadly understood potential and musical competence of students—pianists from various faculties and specializations for whom piano was not the main subject. One example is the concert series Piano Plus, during which students presented solo and chamber repertoire ranging from the Baroque era to the music of the 21st century, and also had the opportunity to perform their own compositions. When the concerts expanded to include collaboration with the Academy of Music in Kraków and the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, the joint events, beyond their artistic and didactic value, created a space for integration of the community.

Since 1999, her students have repeatedly taken part in university and international piano competitions (in Warsaw and Kraków), winning high awards and distinctions. Since 2004 she has participated in the implementation of regular Music Education Concerts for primary school children, organized by the Department of Music Education of the Academy. In 2009–2010 she coordinated music workshops for child-students carried out by the Children’s University in cooperation with the Academy. In 2011, by decision of the President of the Republic of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, she was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit, and in 2014 she received the Rector’s Award of the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław.

She is invited to jury panels of piano competitions for children, youth, and students, as well as to National Scientific and Methodological Conferences, where she has presented papers devoted to issues of piano education in music schools at all levels. At present, the texts of these lectures are also available in published form.