Sławomir Grenda
Double Bass
The double bassist Sławomir Grenda was born in Poland in 1968. He graduated from the Karol Szymanowski Music High School, where he studied with Prof. 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 Herbert von Karajan Scholarship, Mr. Grenda played in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and studied with the legendary former Principal Double Bass Prof. Reiner Zepperitz. From 1994-1995 Sławomir Grenda was the Principal Double Bass of the Berlin State Opera. Since 1996 he has held the position of the Principal Double Bass with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2003 for the subsequent 17 years, he was a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (from 2015 also as the Principal Double Bass).
Mr. Grenda was awarded the top prize in the Geneva International Competition in 1990, considered the most prestigious double bass competition in the world. As a 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, Spain, Czech Republic and in his native Poland. He has played recitals throughout Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea and the United States, performing many of his own arrangements for the double bass from the violin and cello repertoire. He is very active as a chamber musician, especially in a duo with his wife, the pianist Ivana Švarc Grenda.
For years Sławomir Grenda has also devoted himself to double bass teaching and has given master classes in Germany, Poland, Croatia, Spain (Murcia, Cordoba, Seville, Valencia and Madrid’s Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia), the USA, Chile, China, South Korea, Japan and above all for more than 20 years, at the Orchestra Academy of the Munich Philharmonic. His former students now play as members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the KBS Symphony Orchestra Seoul and the New Japan Philharmonic.
Mr. Grenda has also been coaching the double bass groups of renowned youth orchestras such as the Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchester and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. Since 2022 he belongs to the group of tutors of the Grafenegg Academy.
