Maria Jardardottir

Born in Oslo, Norway, in 1979, Maria Jardardottir is a performing and composing voice musician educated with a Bachelor and Master Degree in Jazz and Contemporary Music currently working free lance with international engagements. Through her education and in her work she has kept a strong focus on creative composition, improvisation and extended voice techniques, Indian Classical music (Dhrupad), world music and electro acoustic performance and composition.
Maria aspires to explore the voice and body as one organic instrument for a natural, playful and raw expression of inner processes. Serving the moment with openness, curiosity and a wish to share what is unspoken are key inspirations.
Along with her electro acoustic solo project Melatonin, Maria's other current main projects are the vocal ensemble Røyst Trio (with Kari Nergaard Bleivik and Cecilie Giskemo), the voice and movement based J&M (with dance artist James Jackson), the cross-arts collaboration project WoCalling – Røyst in Collaboration (with renowned singers, musicians, poets, dancers and choreographers from Zimbabwe, Norway, USA, Israel and UK), the vocal ensemble Curious Voice Duo (with Elisabeth Nygård-Pearson), the singer/songwriter duo Caer Caradoc (with guitarist and song-writer Matthew Jennings), the free improvisation trio Endenor (with guitarist Chris Sharkey and reeds and woodwind player Ove Volquartz) and the very newly founded project evamigra (a work in progress, 9 member, all female chamber ensemble that she composes for).
Maria regularly works in projects where diverse art genres are fused and has been commissioned as solo musician for various projects such as; the dance piece 'meet the mind that moves', a collaboration commissioned by the Roskilde Festival 2006, with choreographer and dancer Matilde Mørk, as well as sound installation projects alike 'siren' (platform projects) with sound recordist Chris Watson (Touch Music) and multimedia artist Alec Finlay in 2005 and 'Crosspollination – an evening of insect inspired music' at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre festival Pestival September 2009, UK, celebrating insect life where the treated field recording of Japanese crickets created by Chris Watson formed the environment for Maria's otherworldly vocal performance.