Named a "one-woman dynamo" by the Boston Globe, Maria Finkelmeier is a percussion performer, composer, educator and arts entrepreneur. Prior to rooting in New England, she spent three years in Sweden at the Piteå Institution for Music and Media as an artist-in-residence.
Maria is co-founder of numerous international groups, including Masary Studios (music and light collective), Ensemble Evolution (percussion trio) and Quartet Kalos (Swedish-American band with clarinet, cello, voice, percussion). With these self-managed ensembles, Maria has performed and given masterclasses throughout Europe, Australia and the US, and been featured at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention on numerous occasions. Her classical career includes eight European tours with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic under the baton of Kristjan Jarvi, and a 2016 performance on the Boston Opera House stage with Masary Studios for TEDx Cambridge. As a nuanced interpreter of new music, Maria can often be seen with Hub New Music, and as a soloist for her own show Human and/or Machine.
A sought after multidisciplinary collaborator and contemporary composer, Maria has been commissioned to create works for the Outside the Box Festival, ArtWeek Boston, Illuminus and Boston Center for the Arts. A project highlight includes Masary Studios' large scale piece "Waking the Monster," which turned Boston's baseball stadium, Fenway Park, into a live percussion instrument and projection canvas for Illuminus at HubWeek Boston in 2015. The one-night spectacle was enjoyed by over 30,000 attendees.
As founder and director of Kadence Arts, a nonprofit devoted to incubating artistic projects and engaging local communities through music making, Maria established three core programs: the Beat Bus, a mobile drumming workshop; Times Two, a new music concert series; and Make Music Boston, a free outdoor music festival on the summer solstice. Additionally, Kadence Arts' 2016 production of John Luther Adams' Inuksuit featured over 90 percussionists and was named a "top ten in classical music" by the Boston Globe.
