Annette Maye

Annette Maye was born in Flensburg. After graduating from high school, she first completed a course in Eastern European history, musicology and Russian at the University of Freiburg. In 2000 she completed her contact studies in popular music (pop course) at the Hamburg University of Music. She then studied jazz clarinet and bass clarinet at the music academies in Cologne and Paris (2001-2005) with Frank Gratkowski, Claudio Puntin and Riccardo del Fra. She graduated from jazz in 2005 with a diploma.

Awards: In the year 2016 Annette Maye was awarded the NRW Female Prize by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in cooperation with the WDR Jazz Prize. Before, he had won the SWR world music award “querBeet” with ensemble FisFüz in 1998, and in 2006 she had received the Torneo Internazionale di Musica (TIM) award in Rome in the jazz category.

Projects: The clarinetist works as an instrumentalist and also in her compositions with jazz, world music, contemporary music and improvisation. She played with internationally renowned musicians like Gianluigi Trovesi (Italy), Arkady Shilkloper (Russia), Jean-Louis Matinier, Michel Godard and Tomas Savy (France), Günter Baby Sommer and Hans Lüdemann (Germany), Claudio Puntin (Switzerland / Germany) , Glen Velez (USA), Giora Feidman (Israel), Mohamed Mounir (Egypt), Joris Roelofs and Alex Simu (NL), as well as with the Tonkünstlerorchester Niederösterreich, Concerto Köln or Noreum Machi (South Korea). Maye has been working with theater director Robert Wilson (USA) in productions at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus since 2017 and furthermore with director Stephan Bachmann in a co-production at Schauspiel Köln and Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus since 2021. She has also worked as a musician with the Théâtre de la Ville/Paris. 

She participates in different formations, such as in the German-Turkish oriental jazz trio „ensemble FisFüz“ (various CDs, including together with Gianluigi Trovesi), the modern klezmer duo „Doyna“ (CD „Sammy´s Frejlach“ 2015), the world music formation „Tabadoul Orchestra“, the trio „Il Lusorius“, the „Multiple Joyce Orchestra“ or in their project „Annette Maye’s Vinograd Express“ (CD „Remembering Masada“ 2015): Here the clarinetist together with the Italian Maestro Gianluigi Trovesi made the „Masada Songbook“ by the New York avant-garde composer John Zorn, and Vinograd Express also play original compositions – a way of working that is exemplary for Maye: reshaping foreign material so that it can be integrated perfectly into your own creative cosmos.

The musician was a long-time member of the well-traveled world music formation „Schäl Sick Brass Band“ and co-founder of the modern jazz quartet „New Gate“ and the duo „PyromanDuo“.

Tours: Concert tours have taken the clarinetist through Europe to Turkey and Cyprus, to Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Northern Iraq, Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Russia and the United States, often in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. She has been involved in numerous CD, music theater and radio productions (WDR, ZDF, ARD-Hörspieltage, Deutschlandfunk, NDR, HR, SWR, BR, Schauspiel Köln, Schauspiel Düsseldorf, Festspielhaus St. Pölten / Austria).

Teaching position: She has been teaching clarinet at the Cologne Open Jazz School since 2001 and gives workshops as part of international concert tours and at the Multiphonics Festival. Since autumn 2018, she has also been a lecturer for klezmer / world music at the Cologne University of Music and Dance in Wuppertal.

Multiphonics Festival: Annette Maye has been the 1st Chair of Multiphonics e.V. and Artistic Director of the Multiphonics Festival (International Clarinet Festival for Jazz & Worldmusic). The Multiphonics Festival has already received an excellent response in the press (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, WDR 3, HR 2 kultur, Jazzthing, Jazzpodium, Kölnische Rundschau, Frankfurter Rundschau, Stuttgarter Zeitung and others). The 7th Multiphonics Festival has taken place in October 2020 in the cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf.