Maria I. J. Reich

CV

 

Maria I. J. Reich is a Berlin-based musician, composer and author.

 

Reich is active throughout Germany in numerous projects as a violinist, violist, composer and arranger. She plays improvised and composed music and also locates her compositions in this field. Her compositional spectrum ranges from chamber music (including Enrichment 2016, Works for string quartet 2019) to songs (including Here and Now 2017, Final Song 2020, It is time 2021), to theater music (including "Irrsinn und Idyll" - San Louis Potosí, Mexico 2018) and film music, as well as commissioned works (including for the Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele 2020). In 2020, she accepted an invitation from Tino Sehgal to the Berlin Festival at the Gropius-Bau Berlin. 2021 saw the publication of her first volume of poetry, "Kompost." 2020-2022 Reich received grants for her compositional work from Musikfonds, Deutscher Musikrat and Kulturprojekte Berlin.

 

Since 2021 regular collaboration with Trickster Orchestra as well as with her trio with Mark Pringle (piano) and Moritz Baumgärtner (drums) and her string quartet. Performs as a soloist in various formations.Reich is part of numerous recordings as a musician, composer and arranger. She conducts workshops, most recently for Hitzacker Musiksommer, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, SEYO Greece, Bundesjugendorchester, among others.

Reich grew up in a family of musicians and began playing the violin at age 3. She received violin lessons from Angela Sinell and composition lessons from Katia Tchemberdji in Berlin, among others. From 2007-2009 she was a junior student for classical violin at the UdK Berlin. After graduating from high school, she took private violin lessons with Elisabeth Glab in Paris in 2009.
As a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation, she initially studied Communication and Cultural Studies & Management with Prof. van den Berg and Prof. Tröndle, among others, at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance in 2010-2014. During her studies she researched and worked in Trujillo, Peru in 2012-2013 in the music project Arpegio Perú. She graduated with honors. Her article "Prelude, fantasize and collage: improvisation, a forgotten art in the classical concert" was published in 2018 in "Das Konzert II" (ed. Martin Tröndle) by transcript Verlag and in 2020 in "Concert Studies" (ed. Martin Tröndle) in English translation by Routledge. In 2014-2019 she completed music studies with a major in violin at the Jazz Institute of the UdK Berlin and HfM Hanns Eisler Berlin. She studied improvisation and composition with Prof. David Friedman, Prof. Greg Cohen, Dragan Radosavievich, Julia Hülsmann, Marc Muellbauer, Stephan Braun, Ulrich Bartel, among others.

With her duo NIDO (with Hauke Renken) she played 2015 - 2018 numerous, reviewed concerts in Germany and abroad (e.g. RBB Kultur, HR, Bayrischer Rundfunk, jazzthing) and released the album Leitmotiv Grundgesetz. At the Jazz Institute Berlin, she released the album Planet 9 with a collective of female musicians in 2017. She was a founding member of Stegreif.orchesters and played with the ensemble 2015 - 2020 numerous tours in Germany and abroad.

 

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