Maria Jonas

The singer Maria Jonas is one of Cologne's most creative and versatile personalities, who can be experienced as an interpreter of early and improvised music. Maria Jonas is always in search of a lively exploration of all kinds of music and can be experienced as a soloist as well as in her ensembles Ars Choralis Coeln (women's schola), Ala Aurea (ensemble for medieval music together with the fiddler Susanne Ansorg) and Sanstierce (trio for modal improvisation). That is why the term Trobairitz better describes her work than the usual term singer. The trobairitzes were the female counterpart of the trobadors in southern France in the 11th to 13th centuries. The word comes from the Occitan word trobar: find, invent.
Maria initially studied oboe in Cologne and directed a music school in Venezuela for several years. Back in Europe she dedicated herself to her vocal training with Jessica Cash in London and to the study of early music with Monserrat Figueras in Barcelona and René Jacobs at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She has held a teaching position for historical singing at the Musikhochschule Leipzig and for GregorianUniversity of the Arts Essen (Master Music of the Middle Ages). Guest lectureships have taken her to the colleges and universities of Limerick, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Rostock, Zurich, Kassel, Leipzig and Tilburg.
Concert tours, including with the European Baroque Orchestra under the baton of Roy Goodman and with the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, have taken her throughout Europe. In the field of music theatre Maria Jonas has been engaged by the Teatro Regio di Parma, the Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, the Teatro Real de Madrid, the Teatro Camoes Lisboa, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Royal Albert Hall, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Festspiele Ludwigsburg, among others. In the title role of Philip Glass/Robert Wilson's opera The White Raven and under the musical direction of Dennis Russell Davies, she has performed in Lisbon, Madrid, Carnegie Hall (NYC) and has also appeared at the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC). For several years she has worked closely with Carles Magraner (Valencia, Spain) and his ensemble Capella de Ministrers, which has led to numerous concerts in Spain.
As a creative spirit, Maria Jonas is also increasingly consulted when developing event concepts. In 2008, for example, she took over the artistic direction of the sub-cultural encounter Klangwerkstatt, which takes place annually with changing guests, among others: Pauline Oliveros (USA), Amelia Cuni (Berlin), Laura Newton (Tübingen), Chasan Jalda Rebling (Berlin), Nora Thiele (Berlin), Vladimir Ivanoff (Munich), Samira Kadiri (Morocco) and Bassem Hawar (Baghdad/Cologne). Here musical experiments can be brought to concert maturity. This concept convinced the application team for Nuremberg European Capital of Culture 2025 so much that they included it in the programme.