Fie Schouten

Fie Schouten is a renowned Dutch clarinettist, known for her expertise in contemporary and improvised music, with a particular focus on the low clarinets. Based in Amsterdam, she is an active soloist and performs with various ensembles and collaborators. She has been a guest musician with the prestigious German Ensemble Musikfabrik for 15 years. Over the course of her career, more than 100 works have been composed specifically for her, which she has premiered in various formations.

Schouten is the Artistic Director of the "Basklarinet Festijn," a festival dedicated to the bass clarinet, which had it's first edition in 2014. She has released albums on labels such as Attacca, Trytone, Karnatic Lab Records, Kairos, and Relative Pitch Records.

In 2019, Schouten was awarded the 1st Nieuw Geneco Fair Practice Composition Commission Award for her contributions to the music scene in the Netherlands and her commitment to promoting fair practice in the arts. She has been a Professor of Bass Clarinet and contemporary music at the Prince Claus Conservatoire in Groningen since 2013 and was guest professor at different universities in Europe and USA.

Fie Schouten, Vincent Courtois, Sofia Borges, Pierre Baux: Open Space

Read "Open Space" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
June 24, 2026

Come si dice, tutto il mondo è paese, e quindi anche nella lingua di Racine e Molière--peraltro con titoli tutti rigorosamente in inglese--ci giunge (non è la prima volta, ovviamente) un album in cui suoni di più o meno diretta emanazione jazzistica s'intersecano con la parola detta, di più o meno alta ambizione poetica. E come (quasi) sempre noi qui, forse più di pancia che di testa, ad affermare una volta di più come certi progetti meglio si addicano a ...

Clarinetist Fie Schouten sounds marvelous throughout no matter which clarinet she is playing….

Schouten’s ability to use timbral definition to highlight the growth of intensity in repeated passages creates a sense of movement much like floating…

Fie Schouten makes the bass clarinet ring with a gorgeous sound….Messiaen.. at a perfect fourth below the original pitch, desolation is powerfully rendered by the lower voice…Saariaho.. beautifull…Aperghis…stunning… sounds like a dialogue of mad twins..Finnissy…right in Schouten’s wheelhouse: singing tone and powerful expression.”