Antonio Piculeață

Antonio Piculeață was born in New York on 8 February 2007, into a family of musicians active both in the classical tradition and in Romanian traditional music. His grandparents, Aurel Piculeață and Ionel Puia, were musicians with classical training and close ties to the Romanian traditional repertoire.

He began studying the violin at the age of six under the guidance of his parents. His mother, Loredana Piculeață, teaches at the Dinu Lipatti Music School in Bucharest; his father, Relu Piculeață, is a graduate of the Bucharest Academy of Music.

At the age of nine he appeared as soloist with Orchestra Medici under conductor Iosef Prunner at the Romanian Athenaeum. The following year he performed Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 with the Oltenia Philharmonic Orchestra in Craiova, conducted by Mădălin Voicu.

In 2019 he met the violinist Roman Kim, who took an interest in his development and worked with him on violin technique. At twelve, he took private lessons connected with The Juilliard School with Li Lin and Kenneth Renshaw, and subsequently studied with Viktor Basis at the Lucy Moses School in New York.

During the Covid-19 period he took part in international online projects, including Nicola Benedetti's Global Violin Sessions, working in environments that brought together musicians such as Nicola Benedetti, Geza Hosszu-Legocky, Nemanja Radulović and Tessa Lark. Geza Hosszu-Legocky subsequently became an important artistic influence, introducing him to chamber music and to particular aspects of violin sound and performance tradition.

Antonio Piculeață currently studies the violin with Dora Schwarzberg in Vienna. He holds Romanian and American citizenship and is based in Bucharest.