Double bassist Sławomir Grenda was born in Poland in 1968. He graduated from the Karol Szymanowski High School of Music, where he studied bass with Edward Piwowarczyk and Waldemar Tamowski. He continued his studies with Prof. Harold Robinson at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where he received Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees. As a recipient of the Karajan Scholarship, Mr Grenda played in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and studied with the principal bassist Prof. Reiner Zepperitz. Subsequently Sławomir Grenda served as a principal bassist of the Berlin Staatsoper. Since September 1996 he has held the position of a principal bassist of the Munich Philharmonic. In 2003 Mr. Grenda became a principal bassist of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra found by Maestro Claudio Abbado.
Mr Grenda was awarded in 1990 the top prize in the Geneva International Competition, considered the most prestigious bass competition in the world. He also won several prizes in the Polish National Competition, B. Ciechanski National Competition, the Yale Gordon Competition at Peabody, the International Bass Competition in Kromeřiž, the Czech Republic, and the Performers of Connecticut National Competition in the United States.
A frequent soloist with orchestras, Mr Grenda has appeared with the Munich Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., as well as many other orchestras in the United States, Croatia and in his native Poland. He has played solo recitals throughout Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Korea and the United States, performing many of his own arrangements for the double bass from the violin and cello repertoire. He is a very active as a chamber musician, especially in a duo with his wife, a pianist Ivana Švarc Grenda.
Mr Grenda is dedicated to his work with young people. Over the last 25 years he has been giving classes to the young musicians, members of the Orchestral Academy of the Munich Philharmonic, as well as conducting master classes in Spain, Chile, Poland, Croatia, Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan. In addition Mr Grenda is a tutor of the bass group of the prestigious Mahler Youth Orchestra.
