Jakub Jakowicz learned to play the violin from his father, Krzysztof Jakowicz, also as a student at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. He is also the last student of one of the founders of the Polish violin school, Professor Tadeusz Wroński. He gave his first public concert at the age of eleven. In 1998, at the invitation of Krzysztof Penderecki, he performed at the composer’s festival in Kraków. In 2001, he debuted with the Munich Philharmonic under the direction of Pinchas Steinberg. Since then, he has performed as a soloist with many renowned orchestras, including the National Philharmonic Orchestra in Warsaw, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Czech Philharmonic in Prague, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Dresden Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, Orquesta Nacional in Madrid, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the Concerto Köln. He has collaborated with such conductors as Pinchas Steinberg, Jerzy Semkow, Antoni Wit, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Jacek Kaspszyk, Kazimierz Kord, Jan Krenz, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Eiji Oue, Marek Pijarowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Agnieszka Duczmal, Kirill Karabits, Michail Jurowski, Marc Minkowski and Stefan Solyom. For many years, Jakub Jakowicz has been performing in the violin duo with his father Krzysztof. Since 2000, he has collaborated with the pianist Bartosz Bednarczyk, with whom he has recorded such albums as Subito (Polish Radio), Beethoven Violin Sonatas (Subito Records), recordings of Witold Lutosławski’s Partita (CD Accord) and Franz Schubert’s chamber music (Polish Radio). He has also performed with a number of eminent musicians, including Heinz Holliger, Paul Gulda, Jan Krzysztof Broja, Michel Lethiec, Anna Maria Staśkiewicz, Ruth Killius, Katarzyna Budnik-Gałązka, Ryszard Groblewski, Avri Levitan, Ursula Smith, Daniel Müller-Schott, Andrzej Bauer, Rafał Kwiatkowski, Marcin Zdunik, Karol Marianowski and Zvi Plesser. He is also associated with two string quartets: in 2008– 2014, he was the primarius of the Lutosławski Quartet, with whom he recorded a series of string quartets by Grażyna Bacewicz, and since 2006 he has been a member of the Zehetmair Quartet, an ensemble created by the Austrian violinist and conductor Thomas Zehetmair. The album of the ensemble (ECM) presenting works by Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith received the Diapason d’Or in 2007. In 2014, the ensemble received the prestigious Paul Hindemith Prize of the City of Hanau. Jakub Jakowicz won first prizes at violin competitions in Lublin (1993), Wattrelos in France (1995) and Takasaki in Japan (1999). In 2001, he was one of the three winners of the International Tribune of Young Performers in Bratislava, organised under the auspices of the European Radio Union and the UNESCO International Music Council. In 2002, he was awarded the Polish-Japanese Foundation prize for the most promising young violinist. In 2007, he received the Orpheus Award at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, and in 2018, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the popularisation of Witold Lutosławski’s music, he was awarded the 100th Anniversary Medal commemorating the composer’s birth by the Witold Lutosławski Society. Jakub Jakowicz holds a doctoral degree in music and is a professor of violin at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. He plays a Gand Frères violin (Paris, 1859), courtesy of the Fondation Jerzy Semkow.