Szymon Bywalec graduated with distinction in orchestral and opera conducting from the class of Professor Jan Wincenty Hawel at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. He currently heads the Department of Symphonic and Opera Conducting there. He is also a graduate of the Academy of Music in Kraków, where he studied oboe performance.
From 2006 to 2013, he served as Artistic Director of the Karol Szymanowski Academic Symphony Orchestra. During this time, he collaborated with distinguished conductors, including Gabriel Chmura, Takuo Yuasa, François-Xavier Roth, Arturo Tamayo, Jacek Kaspszyk, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Paul McCreesh.
He also honed his skills as a scholarship holder at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, under the supervision of Gianluigi Gelmetti and Lothar Zagrosek. He has also participated in master classes led by world-renowned conductors, including Kurt Masur and Pierre Boulez.
As a symphony and opera conductor, he has performed on stages in Poland, Europe, and Asia. He has conducted at venues including the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and in concerts in France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, South Korea, China, Romania, and Belgium.
He has collaborated with numerous renowned ensembles, including the Slovak Philharmonic, the Romanian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, and numerous philharmonic and chamber orchestras in Poland and abroad. He also regularly collaborates with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice.
The promotion of contemporary music holds a special place in his work. As artistic director and conductor of the New Music Orchestra, he has performed at major music festivals such as Warsaw Autumn, Beijing Modern in Beijing, Melos-Ethos in Bratislava, and the Hindsgavl Festival in Denmark.
Since 2011, he has been a member of the Warsaw Autumn Repertoire Committee, and from 2013 to 2016, he served as artistic director of the Musica Polonica Nova festival.
Szymon Bywalec has premiered over 140 works by contemporary composers. Recordings made under his direction have garnered acclaim both in Poland and abroad. The recording of Paweł Szymański’s „Three Songs to Words by Trakl” received a recommendation from the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Other recordings prepared under his baton also received distinctions, and the album of cello concertos by Scandinavian composers, released with cellist Jakob Kullberg, received an award from Danish Radio. In June 2024, he was awarded the title of Professor of Arts. A year later, he was again recognized by the Polish Composers’ Union for promoting Polish contemporary music abroad.