Natálie Kulina (1996) is a Czech violinist based in the Netherlands, specialising in contemporary music, chamber music, new media, innovative programming of classical music and interdisciplinary projects.
In 2024, Natálie is working on premiering a new work for violin and electronics by composer Peter-Jan Wagemans, among other collaborative projects in the electroacoustic music sphere.
Since 2023, she is one of the Rizoom network makers and as such developed an audiovisual installation performance The Dark Corner of my Circles, together with Amarante Nat, Naida Amorim and Arieh Chrem, aiming to capture one’s inner monologue, explore cognitive dissonance and interactions with the outside world in the context of cyclical motions.
Gently, it implies questions about boundaries, social/digital voyeurism and perspective curation, as well as our individual and collective responsibilities towards one another.
Currently, Natalie is working on new projects and searching for collaborators for larger performance based and theatrical artworks.
"As a musician, I enjoy making music intuitively, and tell stories. When creating my own projects or collaborating with other artists, I like to explore both elements of surprise and rigorous order, playfulness and stillness, poetry and nonsense. I am interested in the wild contrasts and the undeniable links between individual backgrounds, human experiences, identities, cultures, ideologies and visions, in all what both divides and connects us in today’s world. I want to make art in connection to things that fascinate me, things that move me, things I am curious about, things that are funny, things that have been unjustly sidelined in history, and things that won’t leave my mind."
Since 2021, she is a member of Ensemble Resilience, an innovative collective of musicians that aims to bring a new concept of sound to the contemporary music world. Since 2022 she regularly works as a leader / concertmaster with the Doelen Ensemble in Rotterdam.
Natálie mostly focuses on music, literature, and audiovisual art of the last hundred or so years, new works and research in contemporary arts accessibility, however she enjoys performing 'traditional' classical music too, and has branched out into historically informed performance in some of her past projects.
Together with Portuguese violinist Francisca Portugal, she explores the surprising possibilities of a violin duo as Grimm Duette - by creating new arrangements of chamber or orchestral pieces, as well as commissioning new music and finding ways to use ensemble as small as eight strings in educational purposes and non-traditional environments.
Alongside her performing work, Natálie has taken the master level course Curatorial Practices in Music: Curatorial leadership & Management and in ArtEz, served as a curator for the Echoes of Nothing series, developing side programming for Muziekgebouw aan't IJ between 2020-2022 and has been invited as a guest curator for Sunday Sounds series in Muziekgebouw aan't IJ for the 2023-2024 season. As an intern, she has continued her training path towards cultural organising behind the curtains for the 2024 edition of the Gaudeamus Festival.
Growing up in a family of visual artists and in the culturally abundant region of South Moravia, Natálie's cultivated interest in a wide array of art forms from an early age, eventually choosing to focus her studies on music.
She previously studied at the Brno conservatory with the first violin of the Janáček Quartet, Miloš Vacek, graduated her bachelor's degree in the class of the renowned soloist Ilya Grubert and earned her masters degree with specialisation in new music with Eliot Lawson and Heleen Hulst at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. She drew knowledge and artistic inspiration from masterclasses and collaborations with musicians such as Jiří Bělohlávek, Hubert Kroisamer, Alexandra Soumm, Milan Vitek, Ed Spanjaard, Anne Sophie Mutter, Josef Špaček, Per Enoksson or Ilya Gringolts, among many others.
Although she has since childhood performed recitals in several European countries and made appearances as a soloist with orchestras (Filharmonie Brno, Moravian Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonica Tenerife, Filharmonija Zielonogorska, Orquestra Vigo 430, to name a few), she has now established herself as a chamber musician, performing in venues such as Concertgebouw Amsterdam (Kleine Zaal, 2022 in works of Samuel Adams), Muziekgebouw aan't IJ, Korzo Den Haag, De Doelen Rotterdam, Tivoli Vredenburg, Muziekgebouw Eindhoven (among others) and leading, participating, or being invited as a guest in various ensembles (INSOMNIO, Doelen Ensemble,...) projects (Min Oh's film 'Attendee', MAAT saxophone quartet's album 'Ciudades',...) and festivals (Minimal Music Festival Amsterdam, Grachtenfestival Amsterdam, Gaudeamus Festival, etc.) and is quickly gathering attention as a fresh performer of (not only) contemporary music.
Natálie plays a violin from Czech luthier Tomáš Pilař and an electric five string violin from Czech company NS, acquired with the generous help of Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and Stichting Eigen Muziekinstrument.