Maria Jonas
As a soloist or with her ensemble Ars Choralis Coeln – singer Maria Jonas is one of the most versatile interpreters of early and improvised music. Her adventurous spirit took her as far as Venezuela, where she directed a music school. She also studied oboe and devoted herself to her vocal training in London.
About the artist
leidenschftliche Kammermusikerin
The singer Maria Jonas is one of Cologne’s most creative and versatile personalities, specialised in early, contemporary and improvised music and has found some ensembles to realize her own projects indluding, "condanza", early and contemporary music combined with modern dance and Ars Choralis Coeln, women schola for medevieal music.
On Stage
She is and was invited to concerts and festivals worldwide including Adelaide and Melbourne Festival (Australia), Macau Arts Festival (China), Hebbel-Theater (Berlin), MDR-Musiksommer (D), Rhein-Vokal (D), Voix et Route Romane (F), Styriarte (A), Trigonale (A), Utrecht Early Music Festival (NL), among others. She also has worked with artists and ensembles as Jordi Savall, Sir John Elliot Gardiner, Roy Goodman, Sequentia, Hilliard Ensemble, English Baroque Soloists, European Baroque Orchestra. In Phill Glass‘/Robert Wilson opera „The White Raven“ she apperared in the titel role under the musical direction of Dennis Russell Davies. Inviatiosn to itheatres: Bochum, Ludwigsburg, Luxembourg, Teatro Reggio di Parma, Teatro Communale di Ferrara, Teatro Real de Madrid, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Royal Albert Hall London, Teatro Camoes Lisbon, the Carnegie Hall and in the State Theatre New York during the Lincoln Center Festival.
Teaching
She has held a teaching position for historical singing at the Leipzig Musikhochschule, and is teaching since 1999 at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen. In the last years she accepted invitations for guest lectureships at the Colleges of Music in Belgrad (SB), Rostock, and Tilburg (NL), as well as at the University of Zurich (CH) and Podgorica (Montenegro).
During the "Romanischer Sommer" 2008 she assumed the direction of the Klangwerkstatt "Kolumba singt!" This way of working and presenting music will be an important way for future projects and more and more she herself feels more a "troubairitz" than a normal singer. The trobairitz were female troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries. The word trobairitz comes from the Provençal word trobar, the literal meaning of which is "to find".
