Alfabet Toruński
A cycle of 22 short films about places in Toruń. Each place is a letter, and each letter has its own colour and its own harmonic tension. I compose the music with my own algorithms in OpenMusic.
The series website (in Polish) →About
A violinist by training, a composer by choice
I have worked as an arranger and orchestrator with the Toruń Symphony Orchestra (formerly the Toruń Chamber Orchestra). As an arranger, orchestrator and conductor I have worked with, among others, Tomek Kamiński, Bogdan Hołownia, Grażyna Łobaszewska, the Tour de Carillon festival, Kwartet Infinito, Hevelius Brass and Copernicus Brass.
My works have been premiered at the Probaltica festival. Today I also compose algorithmically, in OpenMusic and Common Lisp. This work led to my harmonic system, tensions, based on the slight detuning of the tempered fifth.
- 2009LOGOS for mixed choir. Honourable mention, Fides et Ratio Composers’ Competition
- 2010/11Popołudniowe Epizody (Afternoon Episodes) for small orchestra. Honourable mention, Muzyka Ogrodowa Composers’ Competition, Wrocław–Kraków
- 2011Dominus regnavit for mixed choir. Second prize, 2nd Polish Composers’ Competition for a Liturgical Choral Work
Selected work
From the studio
- 2002Gracz (The Gambler) after Dostoevsky, a one-man play directed by Andrzej Bubień. Music written with Bogdan Hołownia, including recording and production.
- 2007Muzyczne Listy do Młodych (Musical Letters to the Young), an album and concerts with Tomek Kamiński, Grażyna Łobaszewska and a string orchestra. Arrangements, orchestrations, conducting.
- 2007–09Tour de Carillon: Holst’s The Planets and Handel’s Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks for wind dectet, percussion and carillon. Concerts in Toruń and Gdańsk.
- 2012Misterium Męki Pańskiej (Passion Play) in Grębocin. Music, recording and production.
- 2014–17Probaltica festival, premieres: Panneaux for strings, Zamek Krzyżacki (The Teutonic Castle, from the suite Pomerania), Legenda (Legend), poza Eden (beyond Eden) to a poem by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska.
- 2018Zamek Krzyżacki in an expanded symphonic version, Toruń Symphony Orchestra, Polskie Głosy (Polish Voices) concert at CKK Jordanki.
- 2018Kwartet Infinito: an album for string quartet and piano. Arrangements and musical co-production.
- 2026Alfabet Toruński (The Toruń Alphabet), a film series made with a City of Toruń cultural scholarship.
Projects
What I’m working on
om-cywin
An open library for OpenMusic: tools for note lists, MIDI, sound analysis and charts, built around the tensions harmonic model, which measures the tension of a chord and, the other way round, chooses notes for a given tension.
Code on GitHub →Sketchbooks
Two small phone apps for sketching away from the studio. In the BPF Sketchbook I draw a curve with my finger and copy it into OpenMusic as a BPF. In the Note Sketchbook I draw a melody on a piano roll, listen to it and save it as text for OpenMusic or as a MIDI file. The interface is in Polish.
Music
Listen
On my YouTube channel I mostly publish experimental electronic music, as well as films from the Alfabet Toruński series. The channel has more than 13,000 subscribers and over 400,000 views.
▶ youtube.com/@tomaszcywinski
- Composition
- OpenMusic with my own om-cywin library · Cubase · Pro Tools · Cubasis (iPhone, Android) · BPF Sketchbook and Note Sketchbook – my own apps for sketching away from the studio
- Sound
- Pianoteq · Audiobro LA Scoring Strings and Modern Scoring Strings · Steinberg HALion Sonic and Iconica Sketch · Yamaha Omnivocal (beta)
- Gear
- MacBook Pro 14″ M5 · Yamaha AN1x · Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (4th gen) · Yamaha MSP5 Studio monitors · Sennheiser HD 555 headphones · Behringer C-1 microphone · Zoom H3-VR recorder · iPhone 17 Pro + Aochuan Smart S3 gimbal
- Picture
- Final Cut Pro · Remotion · Pixelmator Pro · GIMP · Blackmagic Camera · Prequel
- Code
- Common Lisp · Claude (Anthropic), co-author of the code for om-cywin, the Sketchbooks, the Remotion animations and this website