Pawel Łukaszewski was born in Częstochowa in 1968, he is a graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw, where he studied the cello (with Andrzej Wróbel, diploma in 1992) and composition (with Marian Borkowski, a diploma with distinction in 1995). In recent years Paweł Łukaszewski’s music has gained a high recognition in Britain. His works have been performed (and some premiered) by such renowned choral ensembles from London and Cambridge as The Holst Singers, BBC Singers, Trinity College Choir, Tenebrae, Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony under the direction of prominent conductors Stephen Layton and Nigel Short. Mikołaj Górecki was born in Katowice in 1971. He started taking violin lessons at the age of six and later also took up the piano. He graduated from the State Secondary Music School in Katowice in 1990 and went on to study composition with his father, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, at the city’s Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music. In 2000, he received a doctorate in composition from Indiana University in Bloomington, USA, and then lectured at McGill University in Montreal (2000-01). He currently lives and works in the USA (Laredo, Texas).