Eugene Asti

Biography

Eugene Asti studied at the Mannes College of Music, New York with Jeannette Haien where he earned his BMus and MA. He has received numerous awards including a Fulbright Scholarship to study piano accompaniment with Graham Johnson at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the Ferdinand Rauter Memorial Prize (Richard Tauber Competition) and the Megan Foster Prize (Maggie Teyte Competition).

Much in demand as an accompanist, he has performed with many great artists including Dame Felicity Lott, Dame Margaret Price, Nancy Argenta and Elizabeth Connell, in places such as the Wigmore Hall, the Rome Opera House, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Düsseldorf, Vancouver, and New York. He has devised recital series for St. John’s Smith Square and St. George’s Bristol to mark the Brahms and Mendelssohn anniversaries in 1997 and in 1999 planned a series for St. John’s Smith Square to mark the Poulenc/Strauss anniversaries. For the 2002/3 season he devised a recital series for St. John’s Smith Square which honoured Robert Schumann and which included recitals by many of today’s leading artists. Further recital series are currently in the planning stages. 

He has done much recording work for the BBC, most recently including several broadcasts for Radio 3’s “Voices” programme with Sophie Daneman, Sarah Connolly, Christine Rice, Stephan Loges, Rebecca Evans, Kate Royal and Jared Holt. 

He has recently performed a US recital tour with Dame Felicity Lott and Angelika Kirchschlager with concerts in New York, Philadelphia, Quebec and Ann Arbor. He also recently performed a recital with Dame Felicity Lott for the BBC Proms at the new Cadogan Hall in London which was broadcast live worldwide. Other recent engagements included recitals with Sarah Connolly, Sophie Daneman, Rebecca Evans, Susan Gritton, Helene Wold, Sophie Karthäuser, Stephan Loges and James Rutherford, including further live broadcasts from the Wigmore Hall, the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, the Brighton and Buxton Festivals, and at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Vredenburg in Utrecht, the Severance Hall in Cleveland, New York’s Weill Recital Hall and Lincoln Center. 

Future engagements include recitals with Sarah Connolly, Susan Gritton, Sophie Karthäuser and Stephan Loges at St. John’s Smith Square in London, the Wigmore Hall, and at Bordeaux and Nantes opera houses. 

On CD, for Hyperion he has recorded three volumes of songs and duets by Felix Mendelssohn with Sarah Connolly, Sophie Daneman, Stephan Loges, Mark Padmore and Nathan Berg; songs by Fanny Mendelssohn with Susan Gritton; and the complete songs of Clara Schumann with Susan Gritton and Stephan Loges all receiving much critical acclaim. For Marco Polo he has recorded songs by Eric Coates with tenor Richard Edgar-Wilson for Marco Polo. Other recordings include further Mendelssohn discs for Hyperion, a live recital disc with Sarah Connolly for Signum Records and the complete Mozart Lieder to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death in 2006 for Cyprès.

Eugene teaches at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and is Vocal Accompaniment Coordinator at Trinity College of Music. He regularly gives masterclasses both in the UK and abroad.