Gloria Artis award for Emeritus Professor

Adrian Thomas, Emeritus Professor at the School of Music and leading authority on Polish music, has been awarded the Gloria Artis Gold Medal, Poland's highest cultural honour in acknowledgement of his outstanding contribution to the study and promotion of Polish music.

The medal was presented by the Polish Ambassador in London, Witold Sobków, at the Royal Festival Hall during a ceremony preceding the world premiere of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki's Fourth Symphony by the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Adrian Thomas has previously received numerous distinctions from Polish institutions, including the annual award of the Polish Composers' Union (1989), the Polish Government's medal of the Order of Merit for Polish Culture (1996), and the Lutosławski Society medal (2005 and 2013).

He is perhaps best known as the author of the only major study on Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1997; Polish edition, 1998), but he has also written extensively on other Polish composers including Witold Lutosławski, Grażyna Bacewicz and Andrzej Panufnik.  His most recent book is the acclaimed Polish Music since Szymanowski (2005). He is currently completing a monograph on Lutosławski's Cello Concerto.

On Polish Music - created and run by Adrian Thomas