Maria I. J. Reich
shaping rich worlds of sound
ABOUT
​"In todays musical universe lives a fresh new voice that has drawn eloquently from the past and added to those elements all her own. Maria Reich paves a sonic path lined with exciting melodies, exotic embellishments and instinctive musicality and takes us down a road that proves to us all that the violin is still one of improvised music's leading players."

Greg Cohen
"Sensitive, alert and dynamic, with a strong sense of melody. Maria Reich is a fantastic musician, playful and artistically ambitious. Always looking for the core of music and her own musicality. For me personally, it is a thrill to improvise with Maria on stage, to communicate and explore ideas with her."
Live Maria Roggen
"It is fascinating to feel how much Maria Reich feels and thinks through her instrument. The composed and improvised passages form a strong unity, and she has defined the exciting area between styles with her music in a very unique and very listenable way."
Sebastian Studnitzky, XJAZZ Festival
"She's not just a highly talented violinist, but also - as some of you surely know - a super-smart mind. I don't know many people whose knowledge about the essence of improvisation is so wide-ranging and close to life like Maria's."
Louis Rastig , A L`ARME! Festival
"Maria has an exceptionally beautiful sound on her instrument and an incredibly great sense of improvisation!"
Cymin Samawatie, Trickster Orchestra
"Maria Reich is an extraordinary musician whose myriad talents express her own, very personal musical world. She's an accomplished violinist, violist, composer and improviser, transporting spontaneity and freshness, regardless of the musical context."
David Friedman
"Completely blank slates are currently being colored by the duo NIDO with violinist Maria Reich and vibraphonist Hauke Renken. The two young musicians are as familiar with classical music as they are with jazz. When they go into action together, however, neither is at the service of the other or vice versa, nor is there a mere fusion of the two silences in the Third Stream sense. The duo's sound is almost unprecedented. Seriousness is not a platitudinous synonym for earnestness with NIDO; the enigmatic humor and the festive pleasure in spontaneously calculated sound reveal themselves above all in the details. The sound of Maria Reich is seductively danced, [...]. Wherever they are in their improvisations, there is always a reverberation of what has just sounded and a foreboding of what is about to sound. Reich and Renken are still staking out their territory with charming understatement, but it's only a matter of time before festivals and concert halls will be licking their fingers at this ballet of the senses."
jazzthing 119
"It takes on the evolution of the concerto through the centuries, tracing when, how, and in what situations improvisation was done, what status improvisation had, and interpreting the reasons why improvisation increasingly disappeared from concert halls in the late 19th century. The increasing standardization, brought about by the cult of the work, the cult of genius, bourgeois striving for education, the professionalization of the business, its economization, and many other factors, may well have led to the loss of the uniqueness of the concert as an event and thus to its solidification. From this perspective, Reich's work is a worthwhile read for anyone planning concerts and grappling with the question of the future of the concert business."
Martin Tröndle