learning, always
I did BA, Pedagogy Minor and MA in Conservatory Maastricht in The Netherlands, from which I graduated in 2016. I was the only cellist that year accepted to MA in Cello in Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, while I simultaneously studied in Västerås Mälardalen University in Sweden. I dropped out of Sweden after a year, and graduated Sibelius Academy 10 days before pandemic lockdown in 2020. That year, I was the only cellist accepted to the highest degree in music in Denmark – the Soloist degree, which I did in Royal Academy of Music Aarhus and graduated cum laude from it in 2023. In the meantime, in 2022 I earned a degree in Cultural Management from the University of Humanities and Economics in Lodz, Poland. From 2025, I am doing an MBA specializing in Business Innovation Culture and Creativity at LAB University.
I am humbled to revisit extraordinary memories, in order to state the fact:
was awarded scholarships, grants, artist residencies, won awards and certificates, and got into prestigious programs where I met unique people. I stood more times than I could count to a standing ovation – and I always felt it was a collective effort – even when it was my project, my initiative, and me alone on stage as a soloist. We are never truly alone, and we are never solely responsible for our success.
Even in times when I spent weeks, months, and years working with new sounds (on cello, on halldorophone, creating audio libraries, recording, editing audio, and composing) – I felt that all my efforts were not the effect of my ego potential – but that every single pedal, electronic compartment, hardware, and software – were made by people, and for people. And I was just hungry enough, hard-working, obsessed, somewhat lucky, to stay focused for long periods of time, to see through each single project – till the end, and above.
Since my teenage years, I collaborated as member of ensembles and orchestras with artists across various genres, including Uusinta Ensemble, Ensemble MidtVest, Adam Baldych, Hugh Sheehan, late Eriikka Maalismaa, Metropole Orchestra with Snarky Puppy, Michael Bublé, Baltic Youth Orchestra, RIAS Orchestra, and Nick & Simon. There is a longer list of really famous/successful these days people with whom I worked at some point – but I limit myself to mention the ones with whom I worked more than once and more intensely, than just one performance or a project.
During the Soloist Degree – I started to evolve as a sound conversationalist, composer, performer, collaborator / innovator. And what’s better – got recognized for my efforts and sound aesthetics, not just by the National Funds or RAMA (University where I studied) – but as well by long established professionals in music. When I began seeking more artistic freedom beyond academic teachings, I started to enter a new phase in life.
On invitation, I conducted recordings and explored innovative sounds of halldorophone during artistic residencies at legendary EMS Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm and the University of the Arts in Reykjavik, where I deepened my artistic expression and broadened approach to composition. Long hours in the studios were compensated with cozy fika with my old friends from the degree I left years before.
Just imagine, I was one of the first ones, recording and working, as a cellist-composer-producer – suddenly I had this extraordinary access to the source of the sound innovations, on a revolutionary instrument (halldorophone) – on which history is being ongoingly written (Hildur Guðnadóttir won an Oscar for Joker using the halldorophone). In Finland, Sweden and Iceland I spent weeks recording, sampling (via Soundly), improvising, editing, creating and polishing sound libraries – selecting and cataloguing all bits – since all sounds of halldorophone are to be kept. I invited to this journey a fellow composer – film music specialist and sound capturer – Emil Sana.
It takes true dedication and a hardcore specialized ear to see in noise and feedback a sense, a direction, and connect it into sounds/compositions/phrases/motives which people then want to listen to – sounds that are harmonious and follow the aesthetic I believe in. A totally different specialization is to polish it, and to make something beautiful out of it.
The effect of this work was my final concerts in Uni in DK, for which I graduated cum laude – all the recorded sounds of halldorophone are “under” what I play on cello. Creating these compositions, from thousands of samples, was a life-altering experience. Performing as Joasia& I acknowledged the impact of both animate and inanimate collaborators on every project. My final graduation performances included improvisations, premieres of commissioned music supported by Sibelius Foundation and Danish Arts Foundation, compositions co-written with Emil Sana, and my first compositions on a major stage.
In 2020, the Norwegian label AMP Music & Records released an album of my crossover quintet Misceo, which I co-founded with Jazz drummer Frederik Bülow.
Throughout my carrier, I performed as a soloist and chamber musician at festivals in Poland (Ensemble Festival), Finland (Kallio New Music Days, Helsinki Festival, Metrolla Festival, Meidän Festivaali), Denmark (Aarhus Chamber Music Festival, Rued Langgaard Festival, invited to New Music For Strings Festival), Croatia (Zadar Organ Festival, Organum Histriae) and Iceland (Ómar Festival in Hjalteyri).
In my early twenties, I performed Shostakovich’s chamber music at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and in my early thirties, I received a GRAMMY Award Certificate as an Associate Performer on the Grammy-winning CD “Saariaho: Reconnaissance”.
I performed in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Russia, Indonesia and Japan.
As a soloist and chamber musician I premiered music by Lil Lacy, Lauri Supponen, Athanasia Kotronia, Valery Voronov, Hans-Jürgen Gerung, Malte Steiner, Marzi Nyman, Steinn Gunnarsson, Christian Balvig, Mirel Iancovici, Heta Aho and Matilda Seppälä.
• first start-up •
In my mid twenties, to address the challenges faced by creative graduates (highest ratio of unemployment upon graduation!), with Arto Sivonen I co-founded Living Room Concerts, an event series that gave young professional classical musicians in Helsinki their first income and an expanded network. It was a big success over the course of weeks, and people were lining to host and attend concerts. Eventually, pandemic/lockdown/shifts in the world – changed the course of it. I took out of it an incredibly rich and fast experience of doing, as a proper entrepreneur – literally all. And I saw, when the product answers real need in people – that it catches fire extremely fast.
• Binging Art •
Besides aligning with a start-up culture, I started gaining interest at the intersection of music and health, and began to see audio and music as a way to help people long-term, since the healing effects of sound are supported by a wide body of research.
To see the fastest health and cognitive improvements through music, you should teach people to play and think like pros. I’ve started to teach about audio and cello since my first studies – in The Netherlands, at Conservatory Maastricht just after 2010 – where I took a Pedagogy Minor Degree. For years, I’ve had students f-2-f.
(Thank God, I had a fascination with tech, and since the early 2000s I was changing code on my private blog pages, and only kept growing/self-learning from there)
Since 2020, I moved to the XXI century in regards to my music specialization – and started to teach online, globally.
In ’25 I co-coded a platform for my students: Binging Art Academy. The Binging Art principle is to enhance mental health through learning to play a musical instrument. By fostering collaboration, mindful knowledge of practicing like-a-pro, and community, the Binging Art method of teaching supports a global network of a new generation of strong, mentally and physically healthy cellists, and shares my expertise with musicians at all levels worldwide.
The platform is expanding at its own tempo, and the fact that every year the main media keep reminding that playing will slow down your cognitive decline as you age allows my online cello academy and community to grow and keeps being an initiative to inspire people to learn the cello, enhancing their well-being, sense of core, and resilience in life.
In 2025, after pitching Binging Art to the prestigious pre-incubator Aalto Creatives Program at the Aalto University, I was accepted to brainstorm for a few months on designing a portable CBBG-size (when disassembled) cello dedicated for Binging Art students – this full-size yet portable cello will be affordable and made from eco, sustainable, recyclable mono-materials. This way, the barrier of entry to join Binging Art will lower, and people around the world will have higher chance to be able to pick up cello as their lifelong healthy hobby, to create their musical story and identity bigger than life.
• music mentors •
Influential to my development in music and my sound aesthetics, were my rigorous (yet kind) teachers, Henrik Brendstrup, Ola Karlsson, Jaani Helander, Hannu Kiiski, Tomasz Strahl, Mirel Iancovici, late Dominik Polonski, Amit Peled and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt.
• mentors •
I was a mentee in a few programs:
PMI Poland Chapter
mentor: Agnieszka Krogulec
Global Thinkers Forum
mentor, a business rockstar: Mirjana Prljevic
such special program, developed in an incubator at Oxford University, here’s my final interview
Turku University of Applied Sciences
mentor: Niina Palmunen
Helsingin seudun kauppakamari – Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce
mentor: Graham Honeywill
working, learning, innovating
Even though I’ve been professionally recording for others since my early teenage years (my sound must be on hundreds of albums/songs by now), and as an amateur audio engineer self-recording and editing since childhood – it wasn’t until 2020 that I began professionally recording on my own. That year, I became instantly verified as a pro audio expert on Fiverr (wild west of freelancing:) and grew a client base all around the world. I also recorded shortly for SoundBetter (then owned by Spotify). I am grateful for my Music Technology dept. friends from the SibA academy, who recommended top microphones to invest in. The gear, partly my skills, and I guess also my ears/aesthetics, which I trained for audio since I was 6 years old, allowed me to get returning clients and collect unforgettable memories and skills from these gigs.
In 2024 I took private composition lessons with Pessi Levanto, one of the most prominent film composers in Finland. Composing, orchestrating, editing, listening, arranging, working within film music – all helping me to expand.
In 2025 I was a Team Lead of Volunteers in Techarena in Stockholm and MIT GSW in Warsaw.
While on the MBA Business Creativity & Innovation, I aim to connect my research with an exciting new workplace and mission, driven by the intersection of innovation, business, health and music. I see it as an obsession worth pursuing.
If you are still reading (thanks!), listen below to how, in these performances – on a soloist concerts, I played some of my compositions on main stage of Aarhus Musikhuset. Played here cello, while I did live electronics and triggered visuals (designed by Jonathan Snapir). And then – I played new, commissioned music. Concert started in pitch black, and even though you can’t ‘see’ me during the first three pieces on vid – trust me, I am sitting there alone, behind a thin canvas on which I triggered visualisations, and played at the same time – with tech and on cello.
from the concert, for which I was awarded a grant
tbc.