Jamaican-born Canadian pianist Maria Thompson Corley gave her first public performance at the age of eight. Since then, she has appeared on radio, television, and concert stages in Canada, the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, Bermuda and Europe, both as a solo and collaborative artist, including performances in Budapest at the Liszt Academy, and in Carnegie Recital Hall, Aaron Davis Hall and Alice Tully Hall, all in New York City. She has collaborated with such artists as Metropolitan Opera soprano Priscilla Baskerville, and internationally renowned clarinetist James Campbell. Her performances as soloist with orchestra include engagements with the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gunther Schuller, the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Gunzenhauser, and the Allegro Chamber Orchestra, with Brian Norcross.
Her first CD, Dreamer, a collaboration with tenor Darryl Taylor, was released internationally on the Naxos label. Her subsequent discs, on Albany, include a recording of the first twelve of African American composer Leslie Adams’ etudes for solo piano and Soulscapes, consisting of music for solo piano by African American women.
Her undergraduate work was completed at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she studied with Alexandra Munn, whose teachers include Irwin Freundlich. Maria Corley received both Masters and Doctorate degrees in piano performance from the Juilliard School, where she was a student of renowned Hungarian pianist Gyorgy Sandor and the only pianist admitted into the doctoral program for the period of two years. She was also chosen to represent her alma mater in a tour of Central America, where she gave performances and master classes.
Aside from being an accomplished pianist, Maria Corley is an author, whose first novel, Choices, was published by Kensington. She is also a composer and arranger of music for both solo voice and chorus, with pieces commissioned and recorded by the Florida A&M University Concert Choir, the Tallahassee Boys Choir, and soprano Randye Jones.
Maria Corley is a member of Sigma Alpha Iota and a Rotary Club Paul Harris fellow.
| The fallacy of ‘The Voice’ |
May 10 2013 |
My teenage daughter, infected by TV shows like “The Voice,” hopes to be a famous singer. Should I encourage her fantasy or squelch it?
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| The case for online friendship |
January 29 2013 |
The bizarre romance of the Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o and Lennay Kekua, his imaginary online girlfriend, got me thinking: Thanks to e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, some of my best friends are people I’ve rarely or never met. But they’ve expanded my world immensely.
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| The Connecticut shootings: Symptoms and causes |
December 18 2012 |
Last week’s mass shootings in Connecticut revived America’s debate about guns. But guns are merely a symptom, not a cause, of a larger challenge confronting civilized societies.
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| Classical music, dead or alive: A debate |
September 04 2012 |
After 40 years of representing Classical musicians, my agent is giving up. He offers an impressive list of reasons why serious music is doomed. But where he sees disaster, I see opportunity— especially if Classical musicians are genuinely creative.
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| Can black opera save Classical music? |
July 17 2012 |
Exciting and innovative black operas are struggling because white audiences tend to avoid them. But all classical music groups are struggling because white audiences tend to avoid them. Is there a common cause here? And might there be a solution to both problems?
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| Trayvon Martin: Reactions, black vs. white (1st comment) |
March 31 2012 |
Black men are instructed to behave compliantly around whites and avoid threatening behavior, like wearing a hoodie. But where does that leave my son, who is black and autistic and finds a hoodie comforting?
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| On Whitney Houston and drug addiction |
February 21 2012 |
Whitney Houston’s recent death revealed again the extent of public ignorance about drug addiction. It’s not so much a moral failing as a condition that strikes vulnerable people.
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| Hazing scandal at Florida A & M’s band |
November 27 2011 |
Florida A & M is justly proud of its Marching 100 band, a famous innovator in band choreography. But a litany of hazing abuses suggests that here’s another case of a campus organization that’s become bigger than its school.
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| Black opera: Struggle and strategy |
September 04 2011 |
Everyone loves Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the vocalists who’ve sung its roles for the past 76 years. Will white audiences ever expand their listening menu to operas by black composers? And how can black musicians help push the envelope?
The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. Music by George Gershwin; re-imagined by Diane Paulus, Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre Murray. Opens December 17, 2011 at Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 West 46th St., New York. (866) 614-4183 or theater.org.
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| Why you shouldn’t quit your job |
July 26 2011 |
Scott Gilmore urges us to quit our humdrum jobs and find important work instead. But when you come right down to it, what job isn’t important?
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| Rethinking America’s priorities |
June 28 2011 |
Rome and the British Empire foundered on their overweening pride. Maybe it’s time for Americans to re-examine the costs and benefits of being Number One in perpetuity.
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| Symbols, from bin Laden to the royal wedding |
May 06 2011 |
Osama bin Laden’s death. The royal wedding. It seems there’s been so much to celebrate lately. Yet what did these symbolic feel-good events actually accomplish?
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| Japanese grace vs. American looting |
March 29 2011 |
When earthquakes occur, why do Americans engage in looting and the Japanese don’t? The answer has less to do with cultural differences than with our society’s definition of success.
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| The dark side of 'Tiger' parenting |
January 16 2011 |
Are we a nation of softies, as Governor Rendell recently claimed? Should we envy the performance-driven Chinese? Funny thing— many kids raised in driven households envy us, and with good reason.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. By Amy Chua. Penguin Press, 2011. 256 pages, $25.95. www.amazon.com.
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| Michael Vick, scapegoat |
October 12 2010 |
I hold no brief for dogfighting, a cruel enterprise conducted solely to entertain the bloodthirsty. But before we condemn Michael Vick, we might look in the mirror.
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| Dr. Laura and the ‘n’ word |
August 23 2010 |
Dr. Laura Schlessinger thinks black people are oversensitive about the “n” word. To me, as a black woman, it suggests that my accomplishments and character are irrelevant.
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| An antidote for cheating: The performing arts |
August 03 2010 |
From our schools to the BP oil spill, cheating and shortcuts are rampant, for one reason: Cheaters know they’re unlikely to be caught. Fortunately, this problem has a solution: Teach students to perform in public. It’s one of the few arenas where patience and hard work are rewarded, and cheating is all but impossible.
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| A pianist reconsiders ‘Jonathan L. Seagull’ |
July 02 2010 |
Even as a concert pianist, I can’t help wondering: Is anything worth the degree of single-mindedness depicted in the popular bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
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| When classical musicians play pops |
May 15 2010 |
What kind of music do classical musicians listen to when they want to let their hair down— especially if they’re black?
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| When musicians won't sit still |
April 17 2010 |
Musicians today are trained not just to play but also to “perform.” But excessive movement by a performer isn’t merely a visual distraction; it can impede execution as well.
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| Elaine Mack’s ‘Black Classical Musicians’ |
March 16 2010 |
Does classical music belong only to whites of European descent? Elaine Mack’s interviews with black classical musicians, past and present, are at once inspiring and dismaying.
Black Classical Musicians in Philadelphia: Oral Histories Covering Four Generations. By Elaine Mack. Writing Our World Press, 2009. 442 pages; $29.95. www.amazon.com/Black-Classical-Musicians.
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| Black audiences and classical music |
January 25 2010 |
In theory, black people don’t like classical music. It’s a fallacious theory, as I can attest, but it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now a visionary Philadelphia conductor is demonstrating that a classical orchestra can thrive by looking beyond racial stereotypes.
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| Musicians with two careers: Pro or con? |
December 22 2009 |
Musicians are taught to spend their waking hours practicing, to the exclusion of all other interests. Does such single-mindedness make them better musicians? That hasn’t been true in my case— nor, I suspect, was it true for dual-career musicians like Schumann, Paderewski and Charles Ives.
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| Musicians and money |
November 07 2009 |
No one goes into a musical career for the money, but even passionate musicians need to eat, as I was reminded when I bargained with a dedicated amateur clarinetist named Tom Sanders.
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| A voice for black classical musicians |
October 10 2009 |
My friend the soprano Randye Jones used to think of herself as an anomaly: an African-American who loved to perform and study classical music. Now, thanks to the Internet, she’s changing that perception, with a new website and web-based radio service.
Afrocentric Radio. www.afrovoices.com.
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| The classical musician’s greatest phobia |
August 11 2009 |
Juilliard taught me almost everything I needed to know about playing the piano, and almost nothing about promoting myself. Why are we classical musicians so hesitant about tooting our own horns?
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| A dentist’s musical Odyssey |
July 20 2009 |
Most people develop a taste for serious music because their parents push them into it. In the case of my Dad the dentist, the opposite was true: He was introduced to classical music by his kids, albeit inadvertently.
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| Michael Jackson and his demons |
June 29 2009 |
Why am I, a classical pianist, so haunted by the passing of a pop music celebrity I didn’t even know? Michael Jackson’s songs reveal a man who struggled with demons but wanted to change himself and, indeed, the whole world. But he lacked the necessary tools, and the uniqueness of his situation assured that he would never develop them.
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| My mother’s greatest gift |
May 09 2009 |
My mother, the descendant of slaves, was a piano teacher who never pushed her kids to become musicians. But she insisted that all of us learn to play the piano. The sense of dedication we’d derive from that experience, she reasoned, would lead us to succeed in a profession that provided a good living, whatever it might be.
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| Sandro Russo’s Lisztomania |
April 21 2009 |
The pianist Sandro Russo has no agent, but his obsession with the music of Franz Liszt has opened global opportunities for him. His latest coup: a DVD recorded on Liszt’s own 1862 Bechstein piano. (With a video excerpt of Russo playing Liszt's Bechstein.)
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| Jade Simmons: Life after Miss America |
March 23 2009 |
Must a beauty queen be shallow? As a pianist and a crusader for Classical music among urban youth, concerts for autistic audiences and teen suicide prevention, Jade Simmons is just getting started.
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| One tenor's musical odyssey |
February 17 2009 |
The versatile black tenor and musicologist Darryl Taylor has evolved from rhythm and blues to Classical to African American art song. Lately he’s singing Baroque music written in the 18th Century for castrati. Can this one-man musical life force straddle several worlds without short-changing any of them?
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| David Cohen: A one-man classical band |
January 10 2009 |
David Cohen grew up in dire poverty in Philadelphia but made a career for himself, first as a pastry chef and then as a multi-talented musician. And at 47, he may just be getting started in promoting his twin passions: classical music and feeding the hungry.
The Monmouth and Ocean Counties Food Bank Benefit Concert. January 31, 2009 at Ocean Grove Youth Temple, Pilgrim Pathway and McClintock St., Ocean Grove, N.J. Doors open at 6; concert at 7. (732) 774-1391 or www.oceangrovefoodbankbenefitconcert.org.
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| In Praise of Christmas Carols |
December 14 2008 |
This is the time of year when no one can escape Christmas music. Which may be a good thing, since they’re beautifully written. A professional musician offers her guide to making the most, musically, of the holiday season.
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| A pianist and her memory |
November 26 2008 |
Concert pianists are expected to perform from memory. That was no problem for me until my psyche was permanently scarred in an auto accident. But over many years, as I was forced to cope with things far more crucial than missing a passage in a piece of music, I learned to trust my inner resources.
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| My Croatian piano debut |
October 21 2008 |
Some people use the Internet to make virtual friendships. Little did I know that the Net would lead to my European solo piano debut— in Croatia, of all places.
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| The piano teacher’s quandary |
September 01 2008 |
God gave my daughter a professional pianist for a mother. But she detested her lessons. If I forced her to continue, maybe one day she’d thank me. Then again, she might hate me— and the instrument— forever. What to do? I, the holder of a doctorate from Juilliard, was clueless in this area of mothering.
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