Born in Minsk in 1984, Artiom Shishkov began his violin studies at the age of five with Janna and Eduard Kutchinsky. At eight, he made his solo debut with the chamber orchestra of the Belarus State Philharmonic. Between 1994 and 2008, he studied with Eduard Kutchinsky, first at the Republican Music College and later at the Belarus State Academy of Music.
He has won prizes at numerous international competitions, including the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Leopold Auer International Violin Competition and the Yankelevitch Violin Competition. His career has taken him to major festivals across Europe and beyond, including the Menuhin Gstaad Festival, the Festival de l’Été Mosan, the Klara Festival, the Festival Résonances, the Swiss Music Festival and the Musica Mundi Festival. He has performed with orchestras such as the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the National Philharmonic of Russia, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
His encounter with cellist Gavriel Lipkind marked a new chapter in his artistic development. As first violin of the Lipkind Quartet, Artiom recorded New Worlds in 2012, an album exploring works by Barber, Bloch, Rachmaninov and Dvořák.
Between 2016 and 2020, he expanded his artistic horizons by collaborating with choreographer Laurent Chétouane on several dance and music creations performed across Europe. This period opened a dialogue between music and movement, revealing new possibilities for expressing human experience.
In 2018, he recorded two of J. S. Bach’s works for solo violin — Sonata No. 2 in A minor and Partita No. 2 in D minor. Released on Backlash Music, the album stands out for its simplicity and honesty: recorded in a single breath, it preserves the fragility and immediacy of live performance.
Alongside his performing career, Artiom has shared his experience through masterclasses in Europe, the Middle East, India and the United States.
Over the years, his playing has been shaped by a sustained search for depth and presence. Rooted in attentive listening to the silence from which music arises and in an open approach to musical expression, his artistic path moves between the classical repertoire and spontaneous creation. He explores how improvisation can unfold into a composed work, allowing musical forms to emerge through the act of playing itself. Beyond technical mastery, his work remains guided by a quiet, persistent inquiry into music as a space of silence, presence and inner transformation.
Artiom plays a Giovanni Battista Gabrielli violin from 1760.
