Maria Asteriadou

Maria Asteriadou is an acclaimed soloist and chamber musician highly praised as an artist with intense personality, virtuosic flair and beautiful tone.

Maria Asteriadou has performed in major halls throughout the United States and Canada as well as Austria, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and Germany. Her orchestra engagements include appearances with the Moscow Radio Symphony, Academy of St. Martin of the Fields, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgart Kamerata, Luxembourg Philharmonia, Bucharest Chamber Orchestra, Virtuosi Moldavi Romania, Iasi Philharmonic Romania, Manhattan School Symphony Orchestra, Adrian Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Chamber Academy, Athens State Orchestra, Kamerata (Athens Chamber Orchestra) as well as the Thessaloniki State and City Orchestras.

Her love for her native Greece and her enthusiasm for new music has resulted in prestigious premiere performances of works by many of Greece’s most important composers such as Manos Hadzidakis, Perikles Koukos, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Emilios Riadis, Christos Samaras, Yiorgos Sicilianos, Nikos Skalkottas, as well as American born Greek composer George Tsontakis.

As an active chamber musician, Maria Asteriadou has collaborated with members of the New York Philharmonic and performs regularly in festivals and summer music institutes. Together with violinist Kurt Nikkanen founded the Elektra Chamber Players, an ensemble comprised of performers from the great orchestras and conservatories of New York City.

The recipient of numerous awards and prizes, Maria Asteriadou won first prize in performance from the State Conservatory in Greece as well as top prize in the Maria Callas International Piano Competition. Maria Asteriadou enjoys the distinction of being the only pianist selected from the Musik Hochschule in Freiburg to perform in honor of the composer-conductor Pierre Boulez in Baden Baden, Germany. Both her Geneva debut recital, as well as her debut at Weill Hall in New York’s Carnegie Hall, for which she won the sponsoring competitions, were greeted with rave reviews. In 1992 she won the Dora Zaslovsky piano competition at Manhattan School of Music in New York and consequently was selected to collaborate with the renowned conductor, Christopher Keene, in a critically acclaimed performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.

Maria Asteriadou has recorded the complete piano and string chamber works by Nikos Skalkottas and the complete violin and piano works by Carl Nielsen for BIS (recording label). She has also recorded works by Greek composers Yiorgos Sicilianos and Emilios Riadis. A CD with solo and chamber music works by Dimitri Mitropoulos, will be released in 2006. Maria Asteriadou has been heard frequently in live performances on radio and television in Europe and in the United States, including the WQXR-FM with Robert Sherman.

Maria Asteriadou holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Constance Keene. She received her Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, as a scholarship student of Jacob Lateiner. Following her undergraduate studies at the State Conservatory of Music in Thessaloniki, Greece, Maria Asteriadou was accepted at the Musik Hochschule in Freiburg, Germany as a student of Tibor Hazay and received her Graduate Soloist Diploma with high honors. She has also worked with Gyorgy Sebok, Richard Goode, Domna Evnouchidou and Vitalji Margulis.

An energetic and passionate teacher, Maria Asteriadou has been faculty at the Algonquin International Music Institute in Canada and the Summer Arts Institute in University of Michigan. From 1992 to 2002, she was the Artistic and Chamber Music Director of the Silver Bay Summer Music Festival in New York. In the summer of 2002 and 2004 she served as a chamber music coach at the New York Piano Competition. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Children’s Foundation.

Source: Manhattan School of Music