Recorded Music

“[These songs] would be a stunning achievement for any artist; that they would arise in the imagination of a middle-aged human resources manager with almost no musical training or creative experience is quite miraculous. This is soul music of the highest order. Even in the precise and sensitive arrangements for keyboard and strings, the improvisational genesis informs both songs and singing. Maria has a natural ease with blue notes and jazzy phrasing. Her alto quavers, floats, moans and testifies, sometimes all within the same song. She is a lover of gospel who draws on the music of the Orthodox Church and the folk music from the mountains of Greece. Her strongest affinity, however, is with jazz and opera. The songs are acts of witness to the ordeal of living. Many are lamentations, blue in spirit if not form. All of them express a transformation of the soul, from passive victim to creative artist, and of the body from sickness to health. By so boldly stepping forth in an act of faith, Maria not only changes herself but is the agent of change in her audience. She has chosen to face death singing—her peculiar duende, the flamenco singer’s fierce devotion to life in spite of loss—and by doing so transcends the fear that silences too many of us daily.”

-Gary Keenan, Poet and Writer, New York City, March 2002