Mateusz Smoczyński is a violinist, composer and bandleader who moves freely between genres. He co-founded the Atom String Quartet and New Trio, leads his own quintet and plays in a duo with cellist Stephan Braun.
He has performed on major stages around the world, solo and with bands, working with artists such as Branford Marsalis, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Markus Stockhausen, Paquito D’Rivera, Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Bobby McFerrin, Anna Maria Jopek, Leszek Możdżer and the NDR Big Band. As a soloist he has worked with Poland’s leading orchestras.
In recent years he has turned successfully to symphonic composition. He has written five concertos for violin and orchestra, including “Adam’s Apple” (2018), “2PiX” for violin and saxophone (2021), performed with Branford Marsalis, and “Fallen Angel” (2022), written for Janusz Olejniczak. His discography includes more than 100 albums, among them a solo album and “Speaking Sound” (ACT Music, 2020), a duo album with Joachim Kühn, named one of the most important albums of the year by DownBeat. In 2024 his first album of symphonic works, “Adam’s Apple”, was released by Warner Music.
From 2012 to 2016 he was a member of the legendary Turtle Island Quartet, two-time Grammy winners, playing over a hundred concerts on major US stages and appearing as a guest on singer Tierney Sutton’s Grammy-nominated album “After Blue”. Turtle Island Quartet’s album “Confetti Man”, featuring Smoczyński, was named the best American chamber music recording of the year by the National Federation of Music Clubs.
Mateusz Smoczyński won the 2nd Zbigniew Seifert International Jazz Violin Competition. He has been named Jazz Violinist of the Year many times in the Jazz Top poll of Jazz Forum magazine. He graduated from the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, where he studied with Andrzej Gębski, and since 2017 he has taught jazz violin and world music there (now the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music). He won the 2025 Fryderyk Award for Jazz Composer of the Year.