Michaela Paetsch was raised in a musical family in Colorado Springs. She studied first with her parents, then with Ivan Galamian and later with Szymon Goldberg at Yale University and at the Curtis Institute of Music. She made her debut as a soloist at the age of eleven with the Mendelssohn E minor Concerto.
Since then, she has been performing as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician in the major musical centres of the world, including New York's Carnegie Hall, Avery Fischer Hall, the Washington Library of Congress. She has also played in major festivals such as the Marlboro, Tokyo, Davos, Berlin (Brandenburg Summer Concerts), Banff, Boulder, and « Mostly Mozart » in New York.

She has won numerous awards, including first prize in the G.B. Dealey International Competition in Dallas and top prizes in the Queen Elisabeth and the Tchaikovsky International Violin Competitions.
She has been invited as soloist with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonics of Osaka, Japan, Seoul, Liège and Bergen; the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Residentie Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the BBC Symphony, among others. She has performed under such conductors as Kent Nagano, Dimitrij Kitajenko, Horst Stein and Myung-Whun Chung.

Her extensive discography includes the 24 Caprices by Niccolo Paganini with Teldec. She has also recorded with Sony Classical, Arte Nova (BMG) and Tudor. She has recoreded the Concertos by Joachim Raff with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (TUDOR 7086).

Michaela Paetsch is the violinist of the quartet ensemble incanto. She lives in Bern, Switzerland.