JAKUB STEFEK PHD, PHD

Jakub Stefek holds doctorates in both the arts and economics. He is the Director of the Centre for Revived Music in Szczecin and the organist of the Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue in Berlin. In 2025 he is a recipient of the Scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

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He graduated with the highest distinction in organ performance from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in 2015, studying under Prof. Andrzej Chorosiński. As part of the Erasmus programme, he also studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz in the class of Prof. Gunther Rost. Since 2017 he has been a lecturer at the Academy of Art in Szczecin. From 2018 he directed the Days of Jewish Music Festival in Szczecin, today transformed into the Festival of Revived Music. Since 2020 he has collaborated with the Jewish Community of Berlin as the organist of the Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue – the only synagogue in Germany that continues the nineteenth-century musical traditions of Reform Judaism to this day.

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In 2021 he received the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts from the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław, and in 2022 he obtained a PhD in Economics from the University of Economics in Katowice.

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His projects and artistic initiatives increasingly gain recognition as historically significant or groundbreaking. He took part in the first post-war concert in the synagogues of Warsaw in which organ music was performed at the Nożyk Synagogue. In Berlin, he made the first-ever recording of the organ works of Arno Nadel, the pre-war music director of Berlin’s synagogues. Through his efforts, the music of composers and cantors Jakub Weiss and Dawid Ajzensztat was performed and recorded in Warsaw for the first time in modern times. In Kraków’s Tempel Synagogue he performed, for the first time after the war, works by Eliezer Goldberg; and he restored to Białystok the synagogue song by Moshe Rabinowicz – both men having served as cantors in those cities for decades. In his native Szczecin he ran the virtual reconstruction of the New Synagogue, destroyed in 1938, and organised the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of its inauguration. In November 2025 he discovered the only surviving organ pipes from the Great Synagogue in Gdańsk.

 

His doctoral dissertation, "The Organ Works of Jewish Composers in Central Europe, 1810–1938", is the first monograph on this subject in Polish literature. It received the Third Prize in the 10th Majer Bałaban Competition for the best doctoral dissertations on Jews and Israel, organised by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw – as the first ever award in the history of the competition granted to a doctoral dissertation in the field of musical arts.

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In 2023 the Requiem Records label released his solo album THE ECHO OF THE TEMPLE, featuring world premieres of works dedicated to him by Adam Porębski, Aleksandra Chmielewska, Anna Maria Huszcza, Marcin Tadeusz Łukaszewski, Dariusz Przybylski and Ignacy Zalewski. He has given lectures and concerts in dozens of cities in Poland, as well as in Germany, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Austria, Israel, and even in such exotic locations as the organ-equipped synagogue in Kingston, Jamaica.

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Under his leadership, the Centre for Revived Music continues to develop pioneering projects that restore the cultural heritage of Central Europe while also inspiring composers, artists and performers to explore new paths of artistic expression.

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Jakub Stefek is also a cultural economist. He completed postgraduate studies in managerial practices (“Akademia Menedżerska – Modern Management Practices”) at the Warsaw School of Economics. He has participated in artistic and academic conferences and has collaborated with institutions such as the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Main Board of the Polish Association of Choirs and Orchestras, and the Mieczysław Karłowicz Philharmonic in Szczecin. He was a TEDx Warsaw speaker, with his talk on the inspiration of the organ instrument heard live by several thousand attendees. He is also active in initiatives promoting the cultural history of Szczecin.

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Since 2017 he has lectured in the postgraduate programme “Cultural Management” at the University of Economics in Katowice. He is the author of publications such as "Defining the Audiences of Organ Music", "Cultural Products in the Opinion of Consumers: The Case of the POLIN Museum", and "Were Organs Hipster? A Historical Instrument in Contemporary Culture". His doctoral research in economics focused on modelling consumer behaviour in the Polish performing arts market.

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He is a member of the Presidential Council for Culture of the City of Szczecin.