Pawel Kamasa studied piano with Rudolf Buchbinder, Jorge Bolet and Harry Datyner. Since his German debut at the Kissinger Sommer Festival in 1987 (after which the Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung deemed him '...despite just starting his career, a first-rank pianist...') he has performed in major European centres including the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Warsaw Philharmonic and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
As a soloist he appeared with outstanding conductors such as Jan Krenz, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Tadeusz Wojciechowski, Marek Pijarowski, Tomasz Bugaj, Wilfried Boettcher and Karol Teutsch. He has been invited to participate in numerous international festivals, including Chateauneuf-du-Pape, St. Savin, Braunwald, Thun, Zakopane Szymanowski Festival, as well as Chopin festivals in Warsaw, Geneva and Antonin. He participated as the only Polish pianist in the performance of the complete works of Chopin at the Festival of Evian in France in 1999. He also took part in the first performance of Cradle Song by Hanna Kulenty at the Munich Biennale '94, and played the world premiere performance of Musique polyphonique by Czeslaw Gladkowski at the international festival Jazz à Mulhouse in 1995.
Pawel Kamasa was the very first pianist ever to perform the complete cycle of Mazurkas by Karol Szymanowski in Paris (1994). His recording of this oeuvre for KOCH/Schwann in Munich was very much praised by Gramophone London, and received the Critics' Choice Award '98 ('...a pianist of outstanding poetry, one of the finest piano recordings of recent years...'). In 2015 a new 2CD-set dedicated to the complete late works for piano solo by Johannes Brahms (Op. 116–119) has been released by DUX Recording Producers ('...Kamasa strikes at the heart of late Brahms...', BBC Music Magazine, April 2015).
Having been a formative factor in his musical development, chamber music continues to play an important role in Pawel Kamasa's activities. He has appeared with the most distinguished soloists and ensembles in Europe, among them the Amati, Wilanów and Szymanowski String Quartets. In 2009 he was appointed artistic director of the international piano festival Chopin – Inspirations. 1810 – 2010, which has been praised as one of the most original projects of the Chopin bicentenary year in 2010.
Pawel Kamasa is a passionate pedagogue, too. From 1997 to 2000 he led the piano and chamber music class at the Conservatory of Schaffhausen/Switzerland, 2012/13 he was visiting professor for piano chamber music at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Since 2012 he has been leading a class for piano chamber music at the Józef Elsner High School of Music in Warsaw, Poland, and he continues his teaching activity by giving master classes and lectures.
Seeking new forms of music presentation, Pawel Kamasa has performed his lecture-recital Mazurka – from Chopin to Szymanowski in German, Polish and English throughout Europe and overseas (South Africa tour 2007). Since 2008 he has been performing a programme called Letters of music, devoted to Johannes Brahms' late works for piano accompanied by the correspondence of Clara Schumann to the composer in Kamasa's own translation into Polish. In 2012 he presented it with great acclaim in its language of origin to the public in Germany.