Mikołaj Zgółka studied at universities in Poland, Switzerland and Ger­many. As a soloist and chamber musician, he won prizes in national and international competitions. Historical perform­ance is in the centre of his interests, with particular emphasis on violin music at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, chamber music of the second half of the 18th century and early Romanticism.

He is a member of the Dresdner Festspieleorchester (Germany), Anima Eterna Brugge (Belgium), the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra and the Wrocław Baroque Ensemble. He has collaborated with many early music ensembles in Poland and abroad, such as Bach Collegium Japan, Collegium Musicum Stuttgart, Berlin Baroque and Gabrieli Consort & Players.

He has established regular cooperation with the Witold Lutosławski National Forum of Music in Wrocław, also as a soloist. He is a concertmaster and initiator of the Polish-German ensemble Pohlnische Capelle, whose ac­tivity focuses on reviving the culture and music of the Saxon court in Dresden and Warsaw. 

The artist has taken part in several dozen recordings, published among others in Deutsche Grammophon (under Kristian Zimerman), APARTÉ, ACCENT, Naxos, DUX, CD Accord. in 2019 his album with premiere recordings of the Carl Höckh violin sonatas was released, honoured with the Pizzicato Supersonic Award 2019 (Luxembourg) and a nomination for the 2020 International Classical Music Awards. In 2020, the CD Accord label and the National Forum of Music released the premiere recording of Józef Elsner's string quartets - Trois quatuors du meilleur goût polonois op. 1.

He is a Doctor of Art and teaches a historical violin class at the I.J. Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań. Since 2019, he has been Director of the Instrumental Studies Institute at this conservatory. He also teaches theoretical subjects, including music rhetoric, a new subject in higher music education. Since 2019, he has served as director of the university's Institute of Instrumental Music.

In 2022 he was awarded the medal "Meritorious for Culture Gloria Artis".

Mikołaj Zgółka plays an Aegidius Kloz violin from 1793 and a copy of Antonio Stradivari made by Marco Minozzi (2022).