Dominik Karski

Dominik Karski is a composer based in Boorloo (Perth), in Whadjuk Noongar Country (Western Australia).

 

His body of work is informed by collaboration with distinct interpreters of new music. Renowned ensembles and soloists who have worked with the composer and presented his works include ELISION (Australia), Schallfeld Ensemble (Austria), Quatuor Diotima (France), harpsichordist Goska Isphording and her ensemble The Roentgen Connection (The Netherlands), flautist Ewa Liebchen (Poland), violist Phoebe Green (Australia), violinist Karin Hellqvist (Sweden), and Paetzold contrabass recorder virtuoso Anna Petrini (Sweden), among many others. His works have been presented at numerous international events, including the Warsaw Autumn International Contemporary Music Festival (Poland), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Gaudeamus Music Week (The Netherlands), and Wien Modern (Austria).

 

As a young composer, he was recognised in Australia through awards such as the 1998 ABC Classic Young Composers’ Award, 1999 Ian Potter Music Commissions, 2003 Albert H. Maggs Composition Award, and internationally, being the Australian representative at Forum 2000 with Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Adelaide Festival and Montreal), ISCM World Music Days 2002 (Switzerland), and the winner in the 2001 International Andrzej Panufnik Composition Competition (Poland).

 

In his composing, he focuses essentially on the player-instrument relationship as the primary source of the musical substance. A number of his works are available on CD and digital releases; of particular importance is a monographic CD with the composer’s flute works recorded by Ewa Liebchen and Rafał Jędrzejewski (Bôłt Records, Poland, 2016).

 

He was the winner in the 2021/2022 Da_sh Editions International Composition Competition with his alto flute work The Unquenchable. Since then, a number of his works have been published by Da_sh Editions, and the winning work has been recorded by Alessandra Rombolá and released by the Madrid publisher.

 

In 2024 Dominik Karski was a grant recipient of the APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund, within which he composed Indivisibility for the ELISION contrabassists Kathryn Schulmeister and Rohan Dasika.

 

One of his current projects is to complete the Streamforms cycle with two more works, making it a series of eight works for solo instruments and mixed trios.