A life on stage
- and everything that grows from it.

Moving between performance, teaching, research and artistic projects that connect them.

I'm a Polish-born violinist who has called Sweden home since 2009.

My days move between three places that, to me, are really one: the concert platform, the teaching studio, and the research desk.

I perform as a soloist and chamber musician and lead violin sections in orchestras across Scandinavia. In the studio I teach the violin starting from the body. At the desk I’m completing a doctorate on a composer the world nearly forgot.

Two threads tie all of it together – the music of women composers, the repertoire left behind, and the body awareness that lets a violinist play freely for a whole life rather than a few hard years. Underneath both runs something simpler still: curiosity.

The same impulse pulls me toward the way the body is built to move, toward music history left in the margins, and toward building new projects around them.

On stage.

I lead violin sections in orchestras across Sweden, Denmark and Finland, including as Guest Principal Second Violin with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra.

Over the years, I’ve sat in the leader’s and concertmaster’s chair with orchestras including the Norrköping Symphony, Gävle Symphony, Norrlandsoperan, Folkoperan, Musica Vitae, the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Nordica, moving between the symphonic, operatic and chamber repertoire.

As a soloist I’ve played concertos by Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn; in chamber music I’m at home in everything from duos to octets.

Education

I studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Bergamo - with teachers including Cecilia Zilliacus, Pavel Vernikov and Svetlana Makarova - and completed the orchestral academy of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic.

Music from the shadows.

Some of the most rewarding music I play was, until recently, almost impossible to hear.

My doctorate at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk is devoted to Laura Netzel - a Swedish-Finnish composer and one of the first women to write music in nineteenth-century Sweden - whose works for violin and piano sat in the archive for over a century. Recording her complete works for violin and piano was more than a performance; it was the artistic side of research, an attempt to return this music to its rightful place in the concert hall. It reflects a commitment I keep returning to: bringing composers like Netzel and Amanda Maier out of the footnotes and back onto the stage.

Teaching.
Technique begins with anatomy.

I learned how much this matters the hard way. An injury once took the violin out of my hands for months. In the quiet that followed, a belief I’d absorbed for years finally cracked: the idea, so common among musicians, that pain is simply part of the job.

It isn't. Pain is a signal.

The body is a musician's first instrument, and my starting point is understanding how it's actually built to move - its anatomy and its biomechanics.

Good violin technique shouldn’t impose artificial solutions on the body; it should grow out of the way the body is designed to work in the first place. So I don’t teach “lower your elbow” or “rotate your shoulder.” I teach how the body is built to move, and why certain movements are natural while others work against our anatomy - and violin technique follows from that understanding. Seen this way, ergonomics isn’t a set of tips laid over technique; it’s the result of building technique in agreement with human anatomy. So much of what we file under talent, or under stubborn technical trouble, is really a body working against itself - a chin rest chosen for someone else’s anatomy, a habit no one ever stopped to question.

And it comes from the stage first, not the studio.

Years of performing under pressure, and that one serious injury, taught me how a body has to work to play freely - everything I teach grew out of that. Body mapping, ergonomics, the Alexander Technique and years of psychology for performers are inspirations along the way, not the definition of what I do; the approach is my own. It also has a public life: The Body Plays First developed as part of the Scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, is a series of films, exercises and guides that makes this knowledge accessible to violinists at every level, from first-year students to professionals. The project was created in collaboration with body-mapping specialists, a physiotherapist for musicians and a performance psychologist.

Beyond the stage.

Curiosity tends to spill past the edge of performance.

I create and coordinate artistic projects - most recently an Erasmus+ exchange between music schools and academies in Stockholm and Stuttgart - sit on the board of the Uppsala Chamber Music Society, and founded the Velaris Foundation for Culture and Art to give concerts, masterclasses and cross-border projects a home of their own.

Recognition.

Education.

Royal College of Music, Stockholm (Bachelor, Master, postgraduate); Haute École de Musique, Lausanne (Master); Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Bergamo; Edsberg Institute; Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra Academy.

On stage.

Leader, concertmaster and guest principal roles with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony, Gävle Symphony, Folkoperan, Norrlandsoperan, Musica Vitae, Uppsala Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Nordica.

Teaching.

Principal violin teacher at Nordiska Musikgymnasiet, Stockholm, where I also teach and lead the string orchestra; qualified for university-level teaching at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm; masterclasses and university lectures.

Awards.

Prize-winner at nineteen national and international violin competitions, including First Prize at the Yamaha (Scandinavia) and Valsesia Musica competitions.

My students.

Prize-winners at the Vivaldi, Berlioz, Enkor, Lugano and Stockholm international competitions, going on to academies across Europe.

Let’s talk.

Whether you’re planning a concert, a collaboration, or looking for a violin teacher - I’d love to hear from you. Let’s create something beautiful together.

contact@agatakawa.com

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