A small musical concert taking place inside a church with an audience of mainly elderly people. Musicians include a pianist, a violinist, a cellist, and a singer performing in front of a large, ornate wooden backdrop.

Maria Konoshenko & Norwich Baroque (2017)

A woman with long brown hair singing into a microphone in front of a bookshelf.

As a singer, Maria’s greatest passion is chamber music, ranging from classical art songs to tango and folk music.

Born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Maria began playing the piano with her father at the age of five and discovered her singing voice at twelve. Around the same time, she developed an early love for languages, often reading her mother’s textbooks on Modern Greek, Finnish, and Romanian.

Maria later studied classical singing at Saint Petersburg State University and piano at the Akhmatova Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, near Saint Petersburg. She continued her musical development by studying jazz harmony and arrangement at C-Jam Studio in Moscow. In 2013, she participated in the Original Jazz Summer School in Cardiff, UK. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2015.

She has performed with several orchestras and Baroque ensembles, most notably Musica Universalis in Saint Petersburg and Norwich Baroque in the UK. Maria has also appeared in duos with distinguished pianists Mihail Blekher (Saint Petersburg), Ivan Yalynsky (Moscow), Mary Howard (UK), and Edward Galper (Helsinki). Her vocal style has been inspired by Maria Callas, Tamara Sinyavskaya, Sarah Vaughan, and Dianne Reeves.

Maria lived and worked in Russia until 2022. In spring 2022, she spoke out against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and performed at the ‘Songs for Ukraine’ fundraising concert in Norfolk, UK. She left Russia with her six‑year‑old son, spending four months in Cologne, Germany, before relocating to Helsinki, Finland.

A young girl with blonde hair in pigtails sitting at an upright wooden piano, looking over her shoulder at the camera.

Photo credits: Peter Horsefield (top), Vladimir Volkov (middle), Margarita Lipets (bottom)