French mezzo-soprano Fabienne Séveillac returned to Europe in 2011 after having spent five years in New York where she obtained a Masters in Performance Voice at the Brooklyn College Conservatory. During her studies there she performed the lead role in L’enfant et les sortilèges, Arnalta in L’incoronazione di Poppea, Pierrot lunaire, and premiered numerous pieces by young composers. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Robert Starr Award for the best interpretation of a living composer. She now devotes her time principally to the performance and teaching of 20th and 21st century music. After a Masters degree in Musicology focusing on György Kurtág and Samuel Beckett at the Tours University, whilst teaching piano and ear training, she began vocal studies in the ensemble Mikrokosmos then at the Centre de Formation pour Jeunes Chanteurs du Jeune Chœur de Paris at the Paris CRR, where she worked with Laurence Equilbey and other conductors such as John Nelson and Pierre Boulez. She performed as a soloist in diverse festivals and artists' residency in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada and the USA. Since her return to Europe, she is the singer and co-artistic director of soundinitiative, and has cofounded the HYOID (contemporary voices) ensemble in parallel. Recently, she performed as a soloist at the Paris CRR with Mesostics, was invited by the ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva, premiered Santiago Diez Fischer's opera La Nuit Aveugle with Le Balcon and Jean-Pascal Chaigne’s cycle Mezza Voce with Les Musiciens du Parnasse, Berio with ensemble Insolitus and of course more concerts with soundinitiative and HYOID in various festivals including the Darmstadt Summer Festival, Sons d’automne in Annecy, What's Next in Brussels, Claviers en Pays d’Auch, Blurred Edges in Hamburg, and the Impuls Akademie in Graz.