The Story of a Violinist and Her Efforts to Have Everyone Keep Creating, Even in 2020
Ada Witczyk is a Londoner who plays modern and baroque violin. She talked to us about her path to her art and her dreams of more opportunities for everyone to keep creating.
Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. Baroque violin, modern violin. Ada Witczyk plays it all, rendering the complex notes with emotion and deep musical love. Altering beautiful gala dresses and jeans, she shares her violin love on her Instagram, and with us.
Ada’s path to violin
Born in Poland, Ada moved to the United Kingdom to study and decided to stay. When asked about the beginning of her violinist life, she talks about her mother. “I was first enchanted by her playing songs from The Sound of Music on her cello for me when I was about 3 or 4 years old” she remembers. “It wasn’t until I was a teenager though when I was mesmerized by the sounds of violinists from the Golden Age such as Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrach, that I decided to do it professionally”.
“Becoming a professional musician is a decision for life, it is a way of living”
As with most art career paths, the journey was not an easy one. When asked how difficult, she exclaimed “very!”.”Becoming a professional musician is a decision for life, it is a way of living. You practice every day to maintain your ability to play and you also need to fight for opportunities to perform. It does require strength and high motivation”.
During the season, with a concert per week, she trains about 3 to 4 hours daily.
Not coming from a musical family, Ada had to learn everything about the profession by herself. She had to search and fight for every opportunity, and went through many fails, learning through experience.
A never-ending learning process
Her path takes self-discipline and willpower. Every day, she wakes up at 7 am to exercise for 30 minutes with online trainers. She allocates an hour or two to her social media and emails. Then it’s practice, for at least 2 hours. After lunch (and some dark chocolate), it’s 2 more hours of practice. She then teaches all late afternoon, before enjoying quiet evenings at home.
Ada loves her job, and she loves her art. “I love learning new things and the violin is a never-ending learning process. Also, I love meeting new people during gigs and traveling to new places.” She finds inspiration in literature and cinema for the most part. She also let herself be inspired by people and their stories. “It’s fascinating to see so many people achieving wonderful things every day”.
The creation of the Composition Competition
On top of her practice and gigs, Ada is also the founder of a recently created Composition Competition, to motivate and support artists with positivity during the pandemic. To her, it’s one of her biggest accomplishments so far.
On her website, the Composition Competiton announces “In summer 2020, while the global Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing, we launched an innovative Composition Competition. Not content to simply sit in lockdown turning our brains to mush with the next Netflix boxed set, we challenged composers to write short pieces for baroque violin & harpsichord”.
With already 3 winners, it’s more than 30 new pieces brought to life by composers all around the world.
“During a time when concerts have been canceled and we’ve been on lockdown, I made a decision to keep creating. With my wonderful team, we created an opportunity for composers from around the world. This Autumn we will film 3 winning compositions and next year in 2021 I will perform them across the country” Ada explains with pride.
Those are her plans for the near future. She dreams of more opportunities for everyone to keep creating.
And as a final piece of advice for women out there on the Art path, Ada encourages: “Work hard and take every opportunity that you can prepare well for. Be strong, kind and believe in yourself”.
