From early on in her career as a harpsichordist, Catalina developed a special passion for the source of sound itself: the antique historical keyboards as a source of knowledge and inspiration. After her acclaimed debut solo-recording "Parthenia", with music of the English virginalists recorded on three original 17th-century instruments from the Fritz Neumeyer Collection at the Castle of Bad Krozingen, she was invited to perform the public première of the oldest and best preserved Renaissance harpsichord in the world: an anonymous Neapolitan harpsichord (ca. 1525), now at the National Music Museum (International Conference of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America, 2014). "Il Cembalo di Partenope", released by Carpe Diem Records in 2017, was praised by the international press and was awarded with the Diapason d'Or. This passion for understanding music through the sound-source itself also has ben transferred into her teaching and development of new pedagogic models.

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Vicens studied harpsichord at USA's most selective conservatory, the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, with Lionel Party. Later she studied at the Musikhochschule Freiburg with Robert Hill and at the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Andrea Marcon and Jesper Christensen. With a special interest in exploring the versatility of the harpsichord and her love for contemporary music, Catalina specialized in Contemporary Music Performance (with historical  keyboard instruments) under the tutelage of Jürg Henneberger and Mike Svoboda at the Musik Akademie Basel. Catalina Vicens took master–classes with harpsichordists like Gustav Leonhardt, Christophe Rousset, Mitzi Meyerson, Menno van Delft, Bruno Procopio, Kristian Bezuidenhout and Kristian Nyquist among others. She has performed under the direction of well-known conductors such as Skip Sempé, Andrea Marcon, Gottfried von der Goltz, Bart Van Reyn, Otto-Werner Müller, and Carlos Miguel Prieto.

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Catalina Vicens won several competition as a young pianist and harpsichordist, including the 1st Prize (on harpsichord and fortepiano) at the International Historical Keyboards’ Competition “Fritz Neumeyer”, on keyboards from the antique instruments collection in Schloss Bad Krozingen, Germany. 

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She’s been invited as jury member at the Jurow International Harpsichord Competition, Mechelen Harpsichord Competition, the Dulwich Historical Keyboard Competition and the Wanda Landowska Competition Poznań.