Maria fell in love with jazz many years ago.
In her live singing and on her new CD - Love Makes The Changes, she combines her love of jazz, "the music of her heart," with her experiences of story-telling as a theater and cabaret artist. Her "musical mission" is that her audiences get to experience the musical texture of this great, collaborative art form, as well as the stories these classic songs, some of them familiar, some of them undiscovered gems, tell.
Love Makes The Changes, Maria's recording debut includes songs from
favorite jazz composers and lyricists (Bill Evans, McCoy Tyler, Michel Legrand, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Herbie Hancock, Gerry Mulligan and others) which speak to her in a very personal way. More recently she has appreciated the story telling nature of cabaret vocalists who can draw you into the lyrics of a song and make you feel and experience your own story and emotions. Produced by David Friedman, she is joined by top shelf musicians Gregory Toroian (piano, arranger, musical director), Skip Ward (bass), David Silliman (drums) and Mark Fineberg (saxophone and flute).
Her mission in doing this CD,
and in her performing of late, is to combine the best of these two art forms in her performances. So, it is her hope that jazz lovers will find satisfaction and joy listening to these jazz classics, and will get a little more appreciation of how story telling techniques add to the music, while the cabaret lovers find the satisfaction of hearing the stories I tell through these songs, while perhaps developing a greater appreciate of jazz. Everybody wins!
