life

Linda Jankowska (Poland/UK) is a musician whose artistic practice orbits around long-term collaborations and multifaceted modes of working with sound that stretch her limitations.
Primarily a violinist, she works at an intersection of contemporary instrumental performance, improvisation and composition.
She is also an active concert producer, contemporary performance researcher and educator.

Linda is a founding member and co-artistic director of Distractfold Ensemble.
Distractfold received the Kranichstein Music Prize for Interpretation from Internationales Musikinstitute Darmstadt in 2014.
She co-curated and co-produced the 2017 Cut and Splice Festival in collaboration with Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3.

Between 2013 and 2022 she was closely collaborating with Katherine Young on their site-specific installation and co-composition ‘boundarymind’, co-produced with Experimental Sound Studio Chicago and 6018th North, which premiered in Chicago in June 2022.

Linda holds a PhD from the University of Huddersfield where she researched the potential of interdisciplinary virtuosity in new music performance under the supervision of prof. Philip Thomas and prof. Robert Adlington.

In 2024 she was awarded the following creative development opportunities: Sound and Music ‘In Motion’ 2024 Longlist bursary, Arts Council UK Develop Your Creative Practice fund, and was selected for the hcmf shorts programme.

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Performer:
Linda performed at festivals such as KLANG (DK), rainy days (LUX), Gaudeamus (NL), Kalv Festival (SE), Donaueschinger Musiktage (DE), International Summer Courses Darmstadt (DE), Le Bruit de la Musique (FR), Nordic Music Days (UK), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Electric Spring (UK), Klangwerkstatt Berlin (DE), Trieste Prima (IT), Vertixe Sonora Festival (SP), NeoArte Festival (PL), Poznań Music Spring Festival (PL), Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemäßer Musik (AT), and at Kammer Klang (London), Nonclassical (London) and Outer Ear (ESS Chicago) concert series, among others.

Together with members of Distractfold Ensemble she held residences at Harvard (2016, 2018), Stanford (2017, 2023) and Columbia (2021) Universities.

Linda performed as a guest violinist with Ensemble Interface, collective lovemusic and hand werk.

She has recorded for Kairos, Carrier Records, Another Timbre, Metier and dFolds, and participated in large-scale dance projects (New Movement Collective‘s Casting Traces, Sadler’s Wells/Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Sutra, Nagelhus Schia Productions‘ Orbo Novo).

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Curator & producer:

2022-present  producer, eavesdropping Festival 

2019 co-curator and co-producer, Collaborations are more refreshing than new socks conference-festival in Antwerp, December 2019

2016-present Distractfold’s co-artistic director

 2016-17 co-curator and co-producer, Cut and Splice Festival Manchester

2015. co-organiser, hcmoff – Concert of Rejects 

2014-2019 Distractfold’s executive director and producer

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Teacher:
Linda is a violin and viola lecturer at Leeds Conservatoire. She taught at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester between 2011-2019. She gave presentation lessons in Spain, Hong Kong and China, and coached during the Pro Corda Violin Course in Summer 2022.

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Education:
She was classically trained in her native Poznań with Marcin Baranowski, later in Munich with Christoph Poppen and in Manchester with Jan Repko. Linda owes her initiation to contemporary music to the Lucerne Festival Academy which she attended in 2007-09.