Biography — Maria Ioudenitch (original) (raw)

Born in Russia, violinist Maria Ioudenitch immigrated with her musical family to the U.S. at the age of two and grew up in Kansas City. In 2021, she received first prizes in the Ysaÿe International Music Competition, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition and the Joseph Joachim International Competition. She also received numerous special prizes at these competitions, including Joachim’s Chamber Music Award, the prize for Best Interpretation of the Commissioned Work, the Henle Urtext Prize, and a recording deal with Warner Classics.

Recognized for her innovative programmes, her first album on Warner – Songbird with pianist Kenny Broberg, released on 24 March 2023 – spans from Franz Schubert, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann to Nikolai Medtner, Richard Strauss and Nadia Boulanger. In upcoming concerts, she performs the Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Barber concertos as well as Haydn’s G-Major and Mozart’s D-Major concertos, while this season’s recital programmes include works by George Gershwin, William Grant Still, Dolores White and Fazil Say, alongside standard violin repertoire.

Photo by Andrej Grilic

In the recent months, Maria Ioudenitch has made her debuts with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (at Berlin’s Philharmonie), MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker and Münchner Symphoniker and returned to her home-town Kansas City Symphony. Other recent engagements have taken her to the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Lithuania Chamber Orchestra and Utah Symphony, while her growing list of conductors includes names like Andrey Boreyko, Alpesh Chauhan, Kevin John Edusei, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Andrew Manze, Ruth Reinhardt and Hugh Wolff. She is also an active chamber musician and has taken part in multiple chamber music tours with Ravinia Steans Music Institute and Marlboro Music Festival. An upcoming Marlboro tour will take place in November 2023.

Photo by Andrej Grilic

Maria began playing violin with Gregory Sandomirsky at the age of three and continued her studies with Ben Sayevich at the International Center for Music in Kansas City and Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she completed her bachelor’s degree. She fulfilled both her master’s degree and Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried.

In the past year, Maria has been mentored by Sonia Simmenauer as part of Simmenauer’s new initiative, zukunfts.music. Maria is currently in the Professional Studies programme at the Kronberg Academy, working with Christian Tetzlaff.