Natalia Pschenitschnikova is one of the world’s leading performers of the musical avant-garde. She has been acclaimed as a singer, flutist, performance artist and composer, and is known especially for her close collaboration with the most important composers from Central and Eastern Europe.

Born in Moscow, she studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and became a pivotal figure in the Moscow Avant-Garde scene with performances, improvisations, theater and dance projects. Alongside these, she also devoted herself to chamber music and performance of early music on period instruments. She toured the former Soviet Union with groundbreaking performances of early music and increasingly works of the 20th century by composers such as Lourie, Varese, Denisov, Stockhausen, Gubaidulina and others.

She has performed at the most important European festivals, including the Moscow Spring, Huddersfield Festival, International Flute Festival Helsinki, Alternativa Moscow, Berliner Festspiele, Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus, Aterforum Ferrara, Inventionen Berlin, Biennale Venice, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien Modern, Berliner Festwochen, and others.

Numerous composers have written works for her including Peter Ablinger, Nic Collins, Johannes Fritsch, Anna Ikramova, Giya Kancheli, Vadim Karassikov, Siegrfried Kopf, Bernhard Lang, Klaus Lang, Daniel Matei, Sergei Newski and Helmut Oehring. She has given world premieres of all of these pieces.

She has collaborated with a number of renowned performers, including Alexei Lubimov, Dietmar Diesner, Elsbeth Moser, David Moss and Vladimir Tarassov, and has performed with orchestras under the direction of conductors Vladimir Jurowski, Peter Rundel, Dennis Russell Davies, Jurg Wyttenbach and others.

She has been a member of the Ensemble Zwischentone and the Ensemble morphmechanik, which is a vocal quartet for experimental music. She is also known for her performances of the music of Giacinto Scelsi and Iannis Xenakis, and collaborated on a performance with Michiko Hirayama in Rome dedicated to Scelsi.

She has made commercial recording for many labels including Melodia, Art & Electronica, col legno, Edition RZ and ECM Records.

Since 1993 she has lived in Berlin.