#LetsBaRock – Jakub Józef Orliński & Aleksander Dębicz

The Warsaw-born singer, now acclaimed as one of the best countertenors in the world, started out as a classical choral singer, studying at the Juilliard School with Edith Wiens and at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw with Anna Radiejewska. Orliński has long since made a name for himself internationally as an interpreter of works by Purcell, Vivaldi and, above all, Handel. He has been a guest at the festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Glyndebourne, performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Théâtre des Champs Élysées and the Theater an der Wien, and worked with ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants under William Christie and Les Musiciens du Louvre under Marc Minkowski. It is unsurprising that he is also popular with a young audience: “I do a lot on Instagram. I want to show people what it means to be a freelance singer. You're in one place for two months for rehearsals and performances, but in between you're travelling to other cities. People can follow what I do and see what my everyday life is like.”

With outstanding technique and great sensitivity, he combines his own compositions with works by old masters; he enjoys improvising. It is no coincidence that Dębicz won the Transatlantyk Instant Composition Contest, the world's only competition in which participants improvise accompaniment to a film on the piano in front of an audience. In 2022, his accompanying music for a fragment of the Netflix series Bridgerton beat 4,000 entries in an audience poll. Dębicz has also released several acclaimed albums, most recently Magnolia, recorded with Jakub Józef Orliński in 2024. He has also written stage music for the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw and the Słowacki Theatre in Kraków, and he regularly performs at renowned festivals. In 2022, Dębicz premièred Maciej Małecki's Symphonie concertante, which the composer dedicated to him, with the Polish Radio Orchestra under the direction of Michał Klauza.