Nataliya Zaytseva, born and raised in Odessa, Ukraine, began her musical journey at the age of 6. She sang in a children’s acapella group into her teens performing around Odessa. Nataliya has been always in love with the piano and after begging her mother for quite a while; her wishes to study the piano were finally answered.

Nataliya moved to the United States at the age of 16 where she attended Hollywood High School Performing Arts Magnet program focusing on voice and piano studies. While in high school, Nataliya played in several piano competitions. After receiving a scholarship to pursue music further, she decided to attend San Francisco State University. She graduated from SFSU music after extensively studying Jazz, World and Afro -Cuban music. Past mentors includes Inara Morgenstern, Art Lande, Joe Gilman, Graham Connah, Jovino Santos, Hafez Modirzadeh and John Calloway. These wonderful and inspiring musicians have tuned Nataliya’s ears to innovative, open harmonies and rhythms- limitless improvisation and self-expression through sounds. She focused her thesis on the compositions and music of Thelonious Sphere Monk.

While still in college, Nataliya became a part of Music Teachers’ Association of California where she taught group piano classes along with individual lessons at several elementary and middle schools; in addition to teaching privately. She continued living, performing and teaching around San Francisco and the Bay Area until she moved to New York City in 2008. In New York, Nataliya continues to teach, arrange, compose and perform. She has held a piano chair in various bands including Salsa Ray and La Nueva Crema, La Madrugada, Brian Woodruff Sextet, Kod AK Po. She added Haitian roots/ voodoo music to her repertoire learning to play conga with master drummer Frisner Augustine and also continued her piano studies privately with Arturo O’farill. The Nataliya Z jazz trio is a project under her direction that incorporates Afro-Cuban standards as well as music of Thelonious Sphere Monk. Nataliya is currently a group piano instructor at Trilok preschool in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and a piano and music theory instructor at the Dea Music and Art School on Staten Island.

Ms. Nataliya Zaytseva has joined the faculty of The Piano School of NYC in 2012