Paula Wilkes

Paula Wilkes was born in Viersen in 2007 and began her musical training at the Mönchengladbach Music School at the age of 6. In 2023, she was accepted as a junior student in Prof. Solenne Païdassi's violin class at the Robert Schumann University of Music in Düsseldorf, where she will begin her full-time studies in October 2025.
She regularly supplements her training with masterclasses with Prof. Yamei Yu and has also received valuable inspiration in masterclasses with Hillary Hahn, Prof. Emile Cantor, Prof. Skerdjano Keraj, Wonji Kim-Ozim, Prof. Ingolf Turban, and Prof. Grigory Kalinowsky.
Paula also played chamber music from an early age and was a member of various orchestras, including the NRW Children's Orchestra and the NRW State Youth Orchestra, where she was most recently concertmaster.
Since 2023, as a member of the German National Youth Orchestra under Alexander Shelley, Tan Dun, and Wayne Marshall, she has also gained valuable experience at venues such as the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Memorial Church in Berlin, the Cathedral of Brixen, the Musikverein Wein, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, and Cadogan Hall in London.
In 2025, she was awarded the special prize of the German Musicians' Association DTKV for the best interpretation of a work
by a female composer for her solo performance at “Jugend musiziert.” She also received the Manfred Vetter Foundation Special Prize for Art and Culture in the “Early Music” category with her ensemble, as well as the NRW Chamber Music Prize. In the national competition “Jugend musiziert,” she has won four first prizes and four second prizes in various categories to date.
As a scholarship holder of the German Music Foundation, she plays a violin by Joseph Klotz (Mittenwald, 1781), which is provided to her by the German Musical Instruments Fund.
She can be seen as the fiddler in Jerry Bock's “Anatevka” at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.