Sigiswald Kuijken studied violin at the conservatories of Bruges and Brussels. In 1972, with the encouragement of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Gustav Leonhardt, he founded the Baroque orchestra La Petite Bande, which since then has given innumerable concerts throughout Europe, Australia, South America, Korea, China and Japan, and has made many recordings for a number of labels. He is also a welcome guest-conductor with many different Baroque orchestras in Europe and abroad.

From 1971 to 1996, Sigiswald Kuijken taught Baroque violin at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague and from 1993 to 2009 at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel. Since 1998, he occasionally conducts modern symphonic orchestras in romantic programs (Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn). Kuijken received an honorary doctorate of the KU Leuven in 2007 and was granted the Life Achievement Award of the Flemish Government in 2009. In 2015, he received the Golden medal from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts, in 2016 the Klara career prize, and in 2018, an Achievement Award by REMA.