American composer, Maria Newman,
was born in 1962 into one of the most famous and influential musical families
in Hollywood. The youngest daughter of nine-time Academy Award-winning film
composer, Alfred Newman (1900-1970), who was the celebrated conductor of the
original Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Maria Newman has been highly honored as a
concert composer in her own right, continuing to garner recognition from
performers, audiences and critics alike.
Maria Newman has been honored with
musical commendations and recognitions from the United States Congress
(2009),
the California State Senate (2009), the California State Assembly
(2009), the
County of Los Angeles (2009), the City of Malibu (2009), and the Malibu
Times
Periodical (2009). She has been spotlighted as the subject of many
feature
articles in the Los Angeles Times, the Malibu Times Magazine, the
Malibu Times
Newspaper, and many other publications. Newman has been honored by the
Los
Angeles' Young Musician's Foundation with a rare 2002 "Debut Award" in
honor of
her large-scale piano concerto, "Emma McChesney." She was awarded the
2008
Malibu Music Award for Classical Artist of the Year, was named Variety
Magazine's "1997 Variety Composer Legend of the Year," and has received
ASCAP Concert
Music Awards annually for nearly two decades, as well as additional
awards for
her compositions. Maria Newman has enjoyed regular broadcasts of her
compositions on public and private radio, and her music for silent film
airs on
Turner Classic Movies regularly.
Maria Newman was educated at the
Eastman School of Music and Yale University, where she graduated magna cum
laude and was the recipient of several named scholarships and awards.
As a recognized serious composer
and performer, Maria Newman has been presented with numerous awards and
commissions from venerable professional organizations and ensembles around the
globe for her critically acclaimed, scintillating, and varied original library
of chamber music, vocal and choral music, music for chamber orchestra,
concerti, symphonic music and highly discussed music for restored vintage
silent film. She has served as both long-term and short-term Composer-in-Residence
for many ensembles and institutions nationally, including the Brevard Center
for the Arts, the Icicle Creek Music Center (Washington State), Central
Washington University, the Montgomery Arts House for Music and Architecture,
the Eastern Sierra Summer Festival, the Kairos Festival and Lyceum (Pacific
Northwest), the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, the New West Symphony, Viklarbo
Chamber Ensemble, the Cortes Festival (Washington State), the Colburn School
Orchestra da Camera, Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society, University of
Kansas, Omaha Institute at the University of Nebraska, Omaha Conservatory,
Azusa Pacific University, California Institute of Technology Women's Glee Club,
California Institute of Technology Chamber Music Program, Santa Monica
Symphony, YMF Debut Orchestra, Gold Coast Chamber Music Festival, Dorian
Orchestra Festival at Luther College, Malibu Coast Music Festival, Occidental
College Symphony, Malibu Coast Chamber Orchestra, the Southern California Viola
Society and Choir, Palisades Symphony, the St. Matthew's Chamber Orchestra,
Verde Valley Arts (Arizona), the Utah Performing Arts Tour, the Mary Pickford
Foundation (Silent Film Commissions) , the Malibu Celebration of Film (Silent
Film), the Malibu Film Society (Silent Film), the Old Town Pasadena Film
Festival (Silent Film), Brigham Young University, the California Arts
Commission, the Los Angeles Jewish Arts Commission, the Shenandoah Valley Bach
Festival, Cinecon Silent Film Festival in Hollywood, Suncadia Lodge Chamber
Music Series (Washington State), Malibu Foundation for Youth and Families,
Solisti New York, Pacific Serenades (Los Angeles), the Los Angeles Jewish
Symphony, Chamber Music Palisades (Pacific Palisades, CA), the Rancho Camulos
Society (in honor of Newman's music based on the esteemed novel of injustice, "Ramona"), the Library of Moving Images, the Mammoth Lakes Chamber Music Festival and Chamber Music
Unbound, "Sundays Live!" radio broadcasts on the former KMZT station in Los
Angeles, the Los Angeles based silent film series entitled, "A Night at the Not-So-Silent
Movies," numerous International Congresses and Conventions including the Harp,
Viola, Flute and World Cello Congresses, and many others.
Critically acclaimed as a violinist and violist, Maria
Newman has concertized around the world as soloist, recitalist, and as a member
of the Malibu Coast String Quartet and VIKLARBO Chamber Ensemble, with whom she
has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the City of Los
Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and the Utah and California Performing
Arts Tours. As a concerto soloist, Newman has premiered many new works for
violin, as well as for viola (including many of her own), and was viola soloist
for the Grammy Award-winning album, Symphonic
Hollywood, in Miklos Rozsa's Viola
Concerto with the Nuremberg Symphony for the Colosseum label (Europe).
Maria Newman's own discography of
original works is quite broad, recorded by many of today's most renowned
classical artists, and includes representations of a large gamut of concert
music genres, from orchestral, concerti and chamber music, to choral, vocal and
silent film.
Newman is the mother of five
beautiful young children, (ages one to thirteen), and is married to conductor
Scott Hosfeld, with whom she frequently collaborates. The family resides in a
craftsman school organic home designed by Eric Lloyd Wright of the Frank Lloyd
Wright family of architects. In this acoustically warm and intimate salon
venue, built around the performance of music, Newman and Hosfeld present over
forty concerts annually, featuring internationally acclaimed concert artists, architects,
authors, painters, sculptors, photographers and speakers.