Anna Rutkowska-Schock was born in Wrocław, Poland. She started her piano education under Prof. Helena Furmanowicz. As a student, she was a laureate of many national competitions; in 1992 she was the finalist of a 4-stage European Chopin Competition in Darmstad.
In 1996, she was the Laureate of The Stage of the Young at the Piano Festival in Słupsk, Poland. In 1997, she was awarded a scholarship to attend Boise State University (Idaho, USA) by Dr. Madeleine Forte. She graduated with a Bachelor of Art degree in Piano Performance with Magna Cum Laude distinction. She completed her master’s degree under Prof. Grzegorz Kurzyński at the K. Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław.
In 2003, Anna received the Best Collaborative Pianist award at the IBLA Grand Prize International Music Competition in Sicily and, as a result, performed many times at Carnegie Hall in New York, other American venues (Yamaha Hall, New York University, Radford University and University of Arkansas) and in England. She has been invited as the official pianist for international music competitions in Rome (2004), Peru (Trujillo, 2005), Slovakia (Trnava, 2006-2010), Sicily (Ragusa IBLA, 2004-2015) and several vocal competitions in Poland. Presently Anna is the official pianist for the Australian Flute Festival. During its last edition, at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2019, Anna played a recital of Ian Clarke's compositions with the composer and illustrated on the piano all the works submitted for a composition competition for pieces for flute and piano. She is also an official pianist for the annual National Wanda Wiłkomirska Violin Competition in Częstochowa, Poland.
So far the pianist has received more than 50 awards for Best Piano Collaborator from different music competitions in Poland and abroad. She has been a jury member of several editions of the IBLA Grand Prize International Competition in Sicily and of the International Piano Competition in Surabaya (Indonesia) in 2011.
In 2006, as a result of successful auditions at Juilliard School, she received a full scholarship to take part in the 2-month Summer Academy of Music, organized by Music Academy of the West, in Santa Barbara, California. During this course she mastered her collaborative piano skills under Anne Epperson and Jonathan Feldman. In 2007 she was the artistic director of the Festival of American Music in Wrocław.
In 2016 Anna joined an Australian chamber music group named The Hourglass Ensemble with which she has taken part in many concerts in Poland, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia. The ensemble mostly promotes music by contemporary Australian composers and performs the most prominent compositions of well-known chamber music repertoire. Each project is crowned with a performance at Sydney Opera House. So far Anna has performed in the following Australian venues: Cathedral of St. Stephen in Brisbane, Wesley Music Centre in Canberra, the Polish Consulate in Sydney, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Independent Theatre in Sydney and the Utzon Room of the Sydney Opera House. The ensemble has also performed live on-air with an interview on the radio station Fine Music 102.5 in Sydney.
In 2022 Anna Rutkowska-Schock performed at a 2-week International Collaborative Piano Festival in Puerto Rico (San Germán), organized by Puerto Rico Center for Collaborative Piano. At the end, Anna accepted an invitation to join its committee which is now working on organizing the next edition of the festival in 2023.
So far the pianist has performed on five continents, with people from about 40 different countries. Apart from performing, Anna also dedicates her time to research. She gave lectures during international piano conferences in the USA (New York, 2005), Indonesia (Surabaya, 2011) and Puerto Rico (San Germán, 2022).
Anna Rutkowska-Schock is employed as a professor at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław (with a post-doctoral degree) and teaches at the Ryszard Bukowski Secondary Music School in Wrocław. To date, she has published five CDs, four with French music (solo and chamber) and one with contemporary Polish music. In 2017 she received an award by the Polish Minister of Art and Culture called Meritorious for the Polish Culture.
