Olga Anna Markowska
graduate of the State Music School in Łomża and the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, she blends acoustic instruments - such as cello and zither - with electronics to create immersive, emotionally resonant sound compositions.about
Her solo releases, the Thrills EP (2024) and debut album ISKRA (2025), released by the Berlin-based label Miasmah, explore themes of memory, identity, and the human relationship with nature. Working at the intersection of sound and image, Markowska develops collaborative projects, creates sound for art installations, and composes music for award-winning documentaries (Koka, 2024, dir. Aliaksandr Tsymbaliuk) and short narrative films (On Heaven and On Earth, 2023, dir. Yulia Yukhymets). She collaborates with artists including Piotr Kaliński (Hatti Vatti), Stefan Wesołowski, Olgierd Dokalski (kIRk), and the KYMATIC ensemble. Her work has been featured at music festivals and galleries across Poland and Europe, including Unsound (Kraków), Rheinsberger Musiktage (Rheinsberg), Live at Mi-So (Berlin), and the Copenhagen Photo Festival (Copenhagen).
programmtext
A day with Olga Anna Markowska: on her acclaimed, wondrous debut album ISKRA, the Polish composer and multi-instrumentalist uses zither, cello, and electronics to carefully craft sonic observations between “Dawn” and “Dusk.” With subtle shifts and finely honed details, Markowska sketches out the course of the day as a clear sequence of changing light moods. Her music, residing somewhere between modern classical and ambient, finds home in the penumbra and its tonal interstices. The album tells the story of emotions and lived experiences that are almost impossible to translate into words: growing up, abandonment, loneliness, the loss of someone close, and those teenage first passions unfolding in the wildness of nature where Olga Anna Markowska was raised.