Born in Lima, Peru in 1980, Maria Chavez grew up in Austin and lived in Houston from the age of 10. She became a club DJ at the age of 17, and eventually met her mentor David Dove (Director of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation-Houston) who convinced her to improvise on the turntables and since then has been totally dedicated to improvised music.

Maria has a degree in Audio Engineering and is working full time on her experimental music. She calls it "improvised/abstract turntabilism", and it consists of all electro-acoustic sounds from only vinyl and needle. She melts and mutates all forms of vinyl and has a collection of 8 broken styluses (and counting) that all get different sounds.

Maria has worked with many international, regional and local improvisers, including Christina Carter who is in a duo with Maria called Weird Cookie. Kaffe Matthews, who is in the process of making a cd with Maria due out early next year, opened for Hrvatski in August of '03 and has performed with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth during her debut in NYC.

Maria also has performed in various art galleries around the United States including the Austin Museum of Digital Art, the Eyedrum in Atlanta, and has an upcoming sound installation project at Diverse Works Art Gallery in Houston, where she will do personal descriptions abstract art through turntabilism, improvising with artist David Chien.

She has played on KPFT 90.1 Pacifica radio, KOOP 91.7 Austin radio, and has her own radio show on KTRU 91.7 for the Electronic Music Show every other friday night from 9pm-11pm.

http://www.pitchphase.com/info/chavez/chavezbio.html

LINKS

ARCHIVE

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Audio

  • Triangulation_090208, Sept. 2, 2008. Weekly show from Radio Ruido live from Brooklyn. With special guests Maria Chavez and Daniel Kotter. (audio/mpeg, 46.3 MB)
  • Triangulation: Maria Chavez, June 5, 2007. Maria Chavez is guest turntabilist on this week's "Triangulation" show live from Brooklyn from Radio Ruido. (audio/mpeg, 163.7 MB)
  • Maria Chavez_Noise! 2007 excerpt Performance excerpt from free103point9 Noise! festival at Ontological Theater in Manhattan. (audio/mpeg, 10.1 MB)

Press, Programs, & Ephemera