Ekaterina Uvarova is a new name in a generation of Russian classical guitarists. Born in Siberia in a family of non-musicians, she began studying the classical guitar at the age of fourteen. Despite her late start, she graduated from the Russian State University named after A.N. Kosygin with top honours and the top score for the performance of her final Bachelor’s exam.
According to Russian guitarist and professor Evgeni Finkelstein, the head of the department of classical guitar in Moscow: “The performing style of Ekaterina Uvarova is distinguished first of all by the richness and beauty of tone, sincerity of performance and clarity of figurative content”.
She obtained her Master’s Degree in The Netherlands with the outstanding professor Johan Fostier at the Fontys University of Applied Sciences (FHK), with a scholarship supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands and FHK. In 2022 she was admitted to The Royal Conservatoire in the Hague and, in addition to classical guitar education, she started studying Early Music on the lute and theorbo.
Ekaterina is a prize-winner of the Dutch Guitar Foundation Competition (2022) and other 13 international and national competitions. In March 2021 she performed live on the Dutch state radio NPO Radio 4. Also, she had the honour to perform at many prestigious halls such as Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow.
Besides her solo performances, Ekaterina is passionate about chamber music. She performs in a duo with a clarinettist Eduardo Villarroel Mera (Spain) and she is a part of the string trio “La Strada”, consisting of two violins and guitar. With this trio, she has been performing in Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
In addition, Ekaterina collaborates with contemporary composers. The collaboration with Dutch composer Maurick Reuser resulted in several new pieces for guitar solo and a duo for clarinet and guitar, which were awarded two first prizes at the composers’ competition in Moscow in 2022. This collaboration formed the core of her master’s thesis, which was about the collaboration between a guitarist and a non-guitar composer.
Ekaterina attended masterclasses with the most important figures of the classical guitar world, such as Leo Brouwer (Cuba), Raphaella Smits (Belgium), Aniello Desiderio (Italy), Stepan Rak (Czech Republic), Carlo Marchione (Italy/The Netherlands), Remi Jousselme (France), Thomas Müller-Pering, (Germany), Otto Tolonen (Finland) and many others.