Born in 1923 in Lwow, Poland, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski has occupied a dual role in the world's musical community. Perhaps best known as an internationally prominent conductor, he is also the composer of a significant corpus of orchestral and chamber works, two of which, the Concerto for Orchestra and the Passacaglia Immaginaria, having been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Skrowaczewski continues to live and work in Minnesota, his residence since becoming music director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, now known as the Minnesota Orchestra, a position he was to retain for nineteen years (1960-79). He has guest conducted virtually all major orchestras and is particularly acclaimed as one of the most inspired and authoritative Bruckner conductors, having performed and recorded all of the Austrian master's orchestral compositions.

His reverence for Bruckner is manifest in Skrowaczewski's own Concerto for Orchestra, the massive second movement of which bears the inscription "The Ascension of Anton Bruckner." Among his most often performed works are Music at Night and the Symphony for Strings, but he has also done transcriptions of works by Bach, Rameau, and Strauss and even a colorful orchestration (in a singable key) of the National Anthem.

Skrowaczewski's principal publisher is Boelke-Bomart, Inc.

"I live so emotionally with the great music I am conducting that I want to have the same feeling for every piece of contemporary music — including my own."

"The works one has heard here and elsewhere are the products of a first-rate compositional mind, works that are intelligently thought through, inventively scored, non-faddish in design, and international in style."