Every month throughout 2019, the Staszic Palace in Warsaw will resound with a concert of songs from Stanisław Moniuszko's Songbooks for Home Use, his chamber pieces and their arrangements. The year-long festival aims to bring this part of the composer's oeuvre, now often forgotten, closer to today's audiences.

The palace, which is now the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences, is located nearby a house where young Moniuszko lived from 1828 to 1830.

The project's initiator, Jolanta Pszczółkowska-Pawlik, a pianist, music producer with a Grammy for the album Night in Calisia under her belt, and manager of the Pawlik Relations company, has released three albums in the series Moniuszko.Songs (vol. 1 in 2014, vol. 2 in 2016, vol. 3 in 2019), recorded with young Polish singers. In 2018 she was the first in Poland to record Moniuszko's complete ballads, on which she also is writing her PhD thesis.

The first half of 2019 will see four concerts. The first, held on 24 February, featured songs from the album Moniuszko. Songs vol. 3.

On 24 March the audience will be treated to a concert by a lineup including Poland's leading opera and jazz artists: Izabela Kłosińska, Adam Kruszewski, Jolanta Pszczółkowska-Pawlik and the Włodek Pawlik Trio. On 28 April Ewa Biega and Jerzy Burtyn will perform Moniuszko's songs and ballads for soprano and baritone, while on 12 May we will have a chance to hear the composer's songs and duets sung not only in Polish (the concert is held in association with the Music Academy of Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas).

Subsequent concerts will take place in the second half of 2019, coinciding with the release of Moniuszko.Songs vol. 4.

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