Fay Claassen’s last album “Red, Hot and Blue” got her placed on the “Grammy pre-nomination list” for the “Best Jazz Vocal Album, 2009”. For “The Shakespeare Album” in November 2009, she received the Dutch “Edison Award”. The “Edison Award” is the most renowned music prize of the Netherlands, comparable to the “Echo” in Germany or the “Grammy Award” in the USA.
Born December 2, 1969 in Nimwegen (Netherlands)
Fay Claassen first of all trained in dance and ballet at the ballet academy in Arnheim before in 1990 she studied vocal jazz with Rachel Gould at the royal conservatory in Den Haag. During her studies, in which she received two prizes (“Onderscheiding van Uitmuntendheid“) for jazz timing and jazz improvisation, she began her professional career as a jazz singer in the bands of among others Tony Overwater, Carolyn Breuer and the Amsterdam Jazz Quintett.
She works with such musicians as, Barry Harris (on the first solo CD ,”With a Song in my Heart”, in the year 2000 for Challenge Records), Toots Thielemans, Mike Stern, and Kenny Werner (“Rhythms and Rhymes”, 2002), Rita Reys (North Sea Jazz Festival 2008). From 2005 to 2008, she was a member of the formation “One Heart, Three Voices” with the singers David Linx and Maria Pia DeVito. She was guest soloist with the “Metropole Orchestra” in the years 2006, 2007, and 2008 under the direction of Vincent Mendoza and Jim McNeely. She gave concerts with the Sky Masters, the jazz orchestra of the Concertgebouw, the WDR Big Band, and the Danish Radio Big Band under the direction of Jim McNeely.
