Maria Soriano

Maria graduated in Art History at Madrid’s Universidad Complutense, and studied singing in London with Jessica Cash and Evelyn Tubb. She also studied voice in Milán (Margaret Hayward) and Madrid (Peter Harrison and Esperanza Abad) before getting her professional singer's diploma at the Teresa Berganza Conservatorie (Madrid).

Interested in Early Music, she had lessons with some of the most prestigious specialist in that subject (Emma Kirkby, Anthony Rooley, Ricard Egarr…) and did concerts on Early Music since the medieval to the romanticism with many ensembles.

Her interdisciplinary training covers early dance choir conducting, Kodaly method, musical pedagogy, voice teaching skills, breathing and relaxation techniques, armonic singing, primal singing…

Historical music gave way to free improvisation, a subject in wich now she bases most of her work. In 2003 she joined the duo Punto Cero, with composer Francis García, doing a series of concerts with vocal improvisation, performance and electroacoustics.

She is a member of FOCO Orchestra, with which she has performed at Malaga’s Improvisation Festival, Hurta Cordel International Festival for Improvised Music (under the direction of Michael Fisher, Keith Tippet, Terry Day and Ilan Volkov).

She has sung as a soloist with LIO (London Improvisers Orchestra) in London, and has a teaching activity over free improvisation through Lisbon Jazz Summer School (Ferias com Jazz), that takes place at CCB in Lisbon (2009 and 2010).

Voice teacher, choir director and head of children's studies at Escuela de Música Creativa de Madrid up to august 2012, when she moves to UK.

She is the band leader and promoter of RADIO DAYS. and is currently developing her CIC Singing4Health, dedicated to promote life quality and social, mental and physical health though music and singing. (Full Bio at www.mariasoriano.co.uk)

Maria has been musical director of Velvet Fist, socialist women's choir in London, currently conducting The Bloomsbury Choir (a choir for people living with HIV) and she leads one of the 'Sing to Live, Live to Sing' choirs from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. She is a member of the Natural Voice Practitioner's Network.