Agnieszka Franków-Zelazny, artistic director of the Polish National Youth Choir, is among Poland's leading choral conductors. She was for many years conductor of the NFM Choir in Wroclaw and is also a prominent educator.

Franków-Zelazny was born in Glubczyce, Poland, on March 24, 1976. She attended the State Primary Music School in Glubczyce, studying piano and flute there, and the State Secondary Music School in Wroclaw, studying flute. At the latter school, she sang in a choir, but her turn toward conducting came while she was a member, from 1993 to 1999, of In terra pax, a choral academy that includes members from Poland, Germany, and France. Franków-Zelazny began as a chorister and later became a section coach, getting the chance to observe various international choral conductors. She was also a member of the Academic Choir of the Wroclaw University of Technology from 1996 to 2000 and was active there as a soloist, voice tutor, assistant conductor, and finally, conductor. Franków-Zelazny majored in biology at the University of Wroclaw, graduating in 2000. By that time, she had already landed a job as a biology teacher at the School Complex No. 1 in Wroclaw and started an ensemble of her own there, the Con Amore Youth Choir. In 2000, she also established the Kameralny Chór Akademii Medycznej ("Chamber Choir of the Medical University of Wroclaw"); she remained director there until 2015. Thoroughly hooked on choral conducting, Franków-Zelazny rounded out her education in the early 2000s in classes, some of them at the Academy of Music in Wroclaw, with Halina Bobrowicz and Ewa Czermak, and took a course in Postgraduate Choirmaster Studies in Bydgoszcz in 2006.

That year, Franków-Zelazny became the director of the Philharmonic Choir of Wroclaw, later renamed the Choir of the National Forum of Music (or NFM Choir). She remained in that post until 2021, leading the group to international awards and making several recordings, including Words Painted with Sounds in 2012. Franków-Zelazny has also served as guest conductor of groups both inside and outside Poland, including the Silesian Philharmonic Choir, Gabrieli Consort, and Bamberger Symphoniker Choir, appearing in major halls such as the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Royal Albert Hall in London (with the Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms), and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany. She is the artistic director of the Polish National Youth Choir, which she founded in 2012, and she has continued to work with the NFM Choir, leading it on a 2023 recording of Bob Chilcott's Canticles of Light on the Signum Classics label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi