About the artist

Nadia Karpenko

Nadia Karpenko is a violinist, composer, and mathematics student at the University of Michigan whose work is driven by curiosity, creativity, and the pursuit of expressive precision. Across performance, composition, mathematics, and other creative disciplines, she is drawn to developing ideas deeply and finding the technique and form needed to bring them fully to life.

Biography

Nadia Karpenko is a violinist, composer, and mathematics student at the University of Michigan whose work is united by an interest in expression, ideas, and creation. 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 precision in service of expressive freedom. 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, performing 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 at the University of Michigan.

Her compositions are shaped by a stream-of-consciousness approach and the shifting moods of her inner world, moving between playfulness and irony, brooding intensity, melancholy, and whimsical joy. Her influences include Prokofiev, Ysaÿe, Stravinsky, Bartók, 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 the technical and creative freedom to communicate ideas with clarity, intensity, and individuality.

Artistic statement

From Thought to Sound

I think of composition and performance as two parts of the same process: the transformation of an internal idea into something that can be heard and experienced by another person. My music often begins with the thoughts and moods moving through my mind. I tend to compose in a stream-of-consciousness manner, allowing ideas to develop, interrupt one another, transform, and return as my attention and emotions shift. Playfulness can border on sarcasm or irony; melancholy can deepen into brooding intensity before giving way to something unexpectedly whimsical or joyful. Rather than separating these contrasts, I am interested in finding ways for them to coexist within a musical whole.

For me, writing the notes is only part of realizing an idea. Virtuosity, voicing, interpretation, and sustained technical effort give performers the freedom to communicate what lies beneath them. I value technique not simply as an achievement in itself, but as a means of reaching greater expressive precision: the more completely I can command an instrument, the more faithfully I can communicate a musical thought.

This is why I am drawn equally to composition and performance. A composer can imagine and notate a musical world, but a performer gives that world immediacy, individuality, and physical presence. Composer and performer therefore depend on one another to complete the journey from thought to sound.

I want to inhabit both sides of that relationship. Composing allows me to give form to ideas that originate within my own mind; performing challenges me to understand how musical ideas—both my own and those of other composers—can be communicated with conviction. By pursuing both, I hope to understand that entire process more deeply and to express musical ideas with as much clarity, intensity, and individuality as I can.

Inspirations

Inner Worlds, Outer Influences

Nadia’s greatest source of inspiration is the shifting landscape of her own thoughts and moods, which often shapes the character and direction of her music. Her musical influences are rooted in the classical tradition but continue to expand beyond it. Prokofiev is among her strongest influences, particularly for his distinctive harmonic language, rhythmic vitality, and balance of wit and intensity, while Ysaÿe has influenced her understanding of the violin’s technical and expressive possibilities. She also draws inspiration from composers including Stravinsky, Bartók, and Schubert. Ukrainian folk songs from her childhood remain another personal influence, emerging especially clearly in Ooy Song for solo violin. As her compositional voice develops, Nadia continues to explore new musical languages while drawing most fundamentally from the ideas, emotions, and contrasts within her own inner world.

Education

My education and musical training.

University of Michigan

Undergraduate studies in Violin Performance, Composition, and Pure Mathematics · Ann Arbor, Michigan · Violin with Professor Fabiola Kim · In progress

Private Violin & Composition Study

Violin with Elbert Tsai · Composition with Arkadi Serper

Résumé / CV

Curriculum vitae

View or download my CV for a comprehensive overview of my musical education, performances, compositions, awards, and professional experience.

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