Biography
About Nadia
Nadia Karpenko is a violinist, composer, and mathematics student at the University of Michigan. She began playing the violin at age five and composed her first pieces shortly thereafter. Before she knew how to write music on staff paper, she kept her compositions in memory, drawing early inspiration from Ukrainian songs and the classical music she heard growing up.
As a violinist, Nadia strives for technical ability in order to achieve greater emotional expression. In 2024, she won the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra Concerto Opportunity performing the third movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with an original cadenza, and was also a prizewinner in the Diablo Valley Young Artist Competition. She served for one year as PACO’s principal second violinist and for two years as concertmaster; during this time, she performed as a soloist, orchestral musician, chamber musician, and improviser. Her performances have taken her throughout California and to Hawaii, Texas, Washington, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Italy.
Nadia studied violin extensively with Elbert Tsai, who also encouraged her development as a composer and commissioned her Sonata No. 1 for Solo Violin: Reflections. Through Tsai, she began studying composition with Arkadi Serper, whose mentorship broadened her compositional influences and musical language. Nadia currently studies violin performance with Professor Fabiola Kim and Composition with professor Kristin Kuster at the University of Michigan.
Nadia’s compositions are often inspired by moods and written in a stream-of-consciousness manner, moving between playfulness and irony, brooding intensity, melancholy, and whimsical joy. Her influences include Prokofiev, Ysaÿe, Stravinsky, Bartók, Dvořák, Schubert, and Ukrainian folk music. Her catalog encompasses solo and chamber works including Scherzando, Reflections, Ooy Song, April Fools, Waltz, Safari, and original cadenzas for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
Nadia is also an experienced chamber music coach and community performer, having coached young musicians through PACO Camp, Presto PACO, and the Pedagogical Ambassadors program and performed extensively at senior centers and other community venues.
Alongside music, Nadia pursues pure mathematics at the University of Michigan. She qualified for the AIME four times, served two years as president of her high school math club, and conducted mathematical research on Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem through UC Davis COSMOS. Her creative interests extend further to visual art, sewing, and writing.
Whether composing or performing, Nadia views music as a process of translating thought into sound. By working on both sides of that process, she seeks to communicate her musical ideas to the world.
