Asya Fateyeva

With her innovative programmes and exceptional skill, Asya Fateyeva is making the saxophone a new focus in the world of music. With classical training and multiple awards under her belt, Asya loves to explore a wide range of styles and periods together with musicians from the areas of classical and jazz music.

Born on the Crimean peninsula, Asya Fateyeva dedicates her artistic efforts to a broad repertoire including music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods in addition to original works for her instrument. At the same time, she
continues to expand her repertoire and network of musicians with whom she collaborates, performs and crafts new programmes. Her training combines the Russian tradition with the classical school of French saxophone. After two years as a junior student under Professor Daniel Gauthier at Cologne’s Hochschule für Musik, Asya Fateyeva, then 17, began formal studies there. Studies in France with Claude Delangle in Paris and Jean-Denis Michat in Lyon, among others, helped shape her artistic development. She completed post graduate studies in chamber music at Hamburg’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater, where she now teaches classical saxophone.

In addition concerti with orchestra and solo recitals, she is also an avid chamber musician. Whether it is an early Baroque programme or Bach’s Goldberg Variations arranged for the violoncello, accordion, and saxophone, music from the 1920s by Erwin Schulhoff and his contemporaries or an encounter between organ and saxophone – anything is possible. She also has multiple projects featuring jazz and world music. Asya Fateyeva views herself as a musician in touch with multiculturalism, which is also reflected in her work. Her playing combines a wide range of schools and influences.

The classically-trained saxophonist is among the preeminent representatives of her discipline and she has earned numerous accolades. She became the first woman to reach the finals of the renowned international Adolphe-Sax
Competition in Belgium and received the 3^rd prize. That same year, the Süddeutsche Zeitung music critic Harald Eggebrecht wrote the following: “The young Asya Fateyeva plays alto saxophone with such elegance and confidence that the beauty of her exceptional sound in Debussy’s Rhapsodie for Saxophone and Piano is sure to captivate anyone.”

Asya Fateyeva performs with various orchestras such as the MDR Symphony Orchestra under Kristjan Järvi, the Wiener Symphoniker under Vladimir Fedoseyev in Vienna’s Musikverein, the Royal Northern Sinfonia under Lars Vogt, the Moscow Virtuosi under Vladimir Spivakov, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio, the Bochumer Symphoniker, the Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra, Zürich as well as Stuttgart and Württemberg Chamber Orchestras. Further highlights include performances with orchestras from Bonn, Frankfurt/Oder, and Kassel. Her concerts at festivals such as those in Colmar, Fermo, Lucerne, Cologne, Moscow, Dresden, Saint Petersburg, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, MDR Musiksommer and the “Spannungen” festival have garnered widespread praise.

Photo credit: Marco Borggreve