Krzysztof Bąkowski was born in Warsaw in 1961 into a family with
a musical tradition. He began studying the violin with his father, Zenon Bąkowski, the long-serving leader of the National Philharmonic Orchestra. He then continued violin studies with his father at the Warsaw Music Academy (diploma in 1983) and, subsequently, at the Indiana University of Bloomington under Tadeusz Wroński and Josef Gingold (1984–86). While at Indiana University he also studied chamber and contemporary music, as well as conducting. He is the winner of the 1990 Tadeusz Wroński Violin Competition in Warsaw. He presently teaches at the Warsaw Music Academy.
Since giving the first performance of Hanna Kulenty’s Still Life with Violin in 1985, he has specialized in contemporary music. He has to his credit many first performances of pieces by Tadeusz Wielecki, Jerzy Kornowicz (works dedicated to him), Zygmunt Krauze, Aleksander Lasoń, Paweł Szymański, Andrzej Dziadek, and Andrzej Dutkiewicz. He has also given Polish premieres of works by Arvo Pärt, Conlon Nancarrow, Michael Finnissy, and Arne Nordheim. He has taken part in contemporary music festivals in Poland, including the Warsaw Autumn (1989, 1994, 1997, 1998), and has performed and lectured at festivals in Rotterdam (1989), Lerchenborg (1990), Louisville (1992), Minsk (1993), Odense (1994), Apeldoorn (1995) and Berlin (1995).
He has made numerous recordings for Polish Radio and tv, sfb Berlin, Deutschlandfunk in Cologne and Dutch tv. His recording of Witold Lutosławski’s Partita (1988) and Chain II with the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Antoni Wit (for naxos) won the prestigious award of French critics – the Diapason d’Or, nominations for the annual awards of the British magazine Classic cd and the Polish magazine ‘Studio’, as well as the 1996 Best Record Award of the Polish daily ‘Rzeczpospolita’.
Krzysztof Bąkowski is presently the leader of the Warsaw Philharmonic and a professor at the Music Academy in Warsaw.