Singing jazz is where Maria explores, without inhibition, the bounteous creativity and wide range of her sultry voice. Her innate sense of swing and phrasing is reminiscent of jazz singers of old. She counts Frank Sinatra, Dwight Yoakam, Betty Carter, Anita O’Day, Ernestine Anderson, Jimi Hendrix and Celeste Mendoza as influences– a list befitting her eclectic approach. She was exposed to Puerto Rican, Cuban, jazz and Tejano music by her guitar playing father and got a daily earful of music from India, Greece, Bulgaria and Israel from the folk records her mother played.

Maria became obsessed with Afro-Cuban rhythms and started playing congas and Afro-Cuban percussion in her late 30’s. That led to electric bass lessons, songwriting, drum set lessons, and then voice lessons. She’s played and sung in numerous bands, performing throughout the southeast. We can’t leave out one particularly interesting detail of this story…Maria was shamed about her singing as a very young child and she vowed at age 6 to “never sing in public again.” A hypnotherapy session helped her break that vow and soon after, she became the songwriter/lead singer of an original band called AFGO (Another Funky Groove Opportunity).