Music
Originally from Boston and now based in Dublin, Maria was groomed to be an English teacher from the time she could pick up a book.  After graduating with a 3.9 GPA and her BA from Boston College in Massachusetts in 1990, fate intervened and turned her Westward instead, and she found herself living the life of a childhood dream - wrangling horses on a ranch in Wyoming 40 miles from nowhere in the wilds of America.  For almost 10 years Maria uttered not a note of music nor stepped foot on a stage, making her way across the USA and eventually returning to Europe, where she had studied for a year at the University of Exeter, England in 1989.  After a an Irishman enticed her come to Ireland, Maria finally found herself on the West coast of Ireland in a little town called Galway.  She had £200 in her pocket and a guitar.  That was in 1997.
      After fighting for her Irish 'resident artist' status for over 4 years, Maria was finally granted 'leave to remain' as an artist in 2002.  This Italian-Polish American has steadily garnered acclaim as one of Ireland’s foremost and dynamic vocalists and critics have lavished praise for her live performances, interpretation of material, and original work.  Maria landed on her feet 9 years ago in Ireland (a ‘legal alien’ for 4 of them…) and she counts among her musicians members of bands from Van Morrison, Sister Sledge, Jools Holland, Lisa Stansfield, The Waterboys, and Paul Brady.  Her one-woman jazz cabaret shows and music gigs have played to packed houses all over Ireland, Europe, U.K., and the USA, highlighting the most engaging qualities of Maria’s music - her wide audience appeal and powerful live performances.
      She began her musical work in Ireland as lead singer and percussionist with members of Irish fiddle player and composer Charlie Lennon's music family, Sean and Ailish Lennon, in the Lennon Quintet and performed around Ireland and on television with them for a year or so. She then based herself in Galway and formed 'The Blow-Ins' with ex-Waterboys saxophonist and mandolin player Anto Thistlethwaite, a local band playing mainly acoustic folk and blues in and around Galway. Going more electric, Maria formed 'Ruby Blue' not long after, a jazzy, bluesy, R&B band playing at Galway venues and festivals. Maria began incorporating jazz into her music around this time and it became increasingly prominent in her sets. She put together The Jazz Exiles in 1999 with ex-Pat Dublin-based musicians and the five-piece band began playing small jazz venues around Dublin.
      In 2002, Maria landed on her feet in Dublin while still being based in Galway and began gigs in Dublin and the rest of Ireland as she performed with top Irish musicians, like Richie, Hugh, and Michael Buckley, and at the prestigious Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, who invited her back 4 years running. Maria quickly became a regular on the jazz scene and considered by many to be Ireland's most respected and promising female vocalist and jazz performer. Not long after, Maria began chasing gigs at larger venues around Ireland and support slots for visiting international artists, such as the likes of Dionne Warwick, began to come up regularly for her.

Maria was fast becoming a bright and fiery star on the cabaret scene in Ireland as well, and her one-woman jazz/cabaret shows have been lauded by critics and entrancing audiences in Europe, U.K., and USA. Maria wrote "All About Love" for the Dublin Fringe Festival 2002 and was invited to create "Lush Life" especially for the opulent 'Spiegeltent' during the Dublin Theatre Festival 2003. Both shows played to packed houses and marry three of Maria's skills as a performer . acting, singing, and playing, and most impressive is the fact that Maria writes, designs, and produces all her shows herself. Other one-woman shows quickly followed, "Once Upon A Christmas" (2004), "Torch Song" (2004), and "Night & the City" (2005), and the album launch show “Torch” for her current album'Torch Song' (2006)  Maria created a new set for her recent concerts in Dublin that stepped away from the jazz genre of her usual gigs to incorporate Spanish, Latin, and Argentinian music as well as her own new compositions.  The shows were a resounding success and affirm Maria's dexterous versatility not only as a musician and singer but also as a performer.  Her cabaret shows and straight jazz gigs have now headlined venues in Ireland, UK, Europe, and USA, packing venues and receiving rave reviews from critics and audience alike wherever she goes.
This tour-de-force performer has shared the stage with such diverse names as Dionne Warwick and the Irish legend Ronnie Drew of 'The Dubliners' fame and these days and launched her first album "All About Love" in April 2003. In September 2006, Maria celebrated the launch of her new album, "Torch Song".
Maria performs an originals/acoustic gig as well which is folk and blues based, reaching back to her own musical roots in the U.S.. Live in-studio versions of two of Maria's original songs, "Go Back Home" and "This Love Is Through", are included on separate CD compilations featuring Grammy Award Winners John Prine, Bella Fleck, and Bruce Mathiske and Irish artists such as Juliet Turner, Damien Rice, David Kitt, Jack L., The 4 Of Us, Kila, and Mary Coughlan.
      Maria also has a passion for folk songs of other countries in their original languages and has a repertoire of Spanish, Italian, French, and Polish songs that she adds to and performs regularly; her fluency in Spanish definitely helps. (She's working on her Italian and Polish.) Voice is Maria's first instrument now but it wasn't always. She was a choral accompanist on piano for 3 years, a concert flautist in Boston for 5 years, and has played guitar since she was a child. She also played saxophone in a jazz swing band for 2 years, and plays a plethora of percussion instruments.

Acting
Maria began acting in Ireland in 1996 and her first work professionally as an actor was with Shakespeare & Company, a Boston-based theatre company producing both Shakespeare and modern works and she then moved on to work with the Irish company The Sugan Theatre Company also in Boston. In the late 1990's she moved to Ireland and her first acting role was with Roger Corman's Irish-based company Concorde Anois/New Horizons. She acted in 4 of Roger's films (all speaking and featured roles, with, surprise, no nudity!) as well as Irish short films, feature films, and television commercials. Her stage debut came in the play "Eclipsed" in 1999 and she continued to perform on stage to Irish audience as with her multi-media company "extempo". Maria was director and co-producer of 'extempo' as well as composing, arranging, and performing in the productions. In 1999 Maria produced 3 shows in Galway under the 'extempo' umbrella at The Town Hall Theatre and site-specific venues. Maria also began collaborating with members of Poland's Gardzienice Theatre Company in 1998 and continues to work with them both in Poland and London.
      Maria founded the Bare Bards Theatre Co. in 1998, an improv and street theatre performance company, and gained a reputation in the West of Ireland as "innovative, wild, and highly entertaining" performance group that invaded the streets of towns all over the West coast during arts and cultural festivals, their slew of characters and scenarios ranging from filthy medieval street urchins to slightly remedial but sincere culchie cheerleaders from hell, and everything in between. Nothing was sacred and irreverence was the order of the day.
      Maria found an acting agent in Dublin not long after she began performing in Ireland and commuted back and forth between her base in Galway and Dublin for a remarkably long stint of 3-4 years, during which Maria was cast in speaking roles in films with actors such as Angela Lansbury, Patrick Bergin, Mia Farrow, Keith Carradine, and Patsy Kensit. Eventually Maria found most of her performance and work opportunities were coming from Dublin companies and in 2002 she moved her base from Galway to Dublin, where she currently resides.
      In January 2001 Maria landed her first television role in Ireland's most popular soap opera Fair City as the nasty American boss from hell character 'Camille Barnett'. Although the character so far only appears in 10 episodes of the show it was more than enough time for her to create a stir and make her presence feared and loathed amongst the population of fictitious Carrigstown. Maria's TV debut was quickly followed by a leading role with the Cork-based Corca Dorca Theatre Company (who produced the smash hit "Disco Pigs" in 1998) in their highly acclaimed sell-out productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the summer of 2001.
      Maria played the two main men's roles, 'Oberon' and 'Theseus', and was touted as 'mesmerizing'. In August 2002 Maria performed and produced a jazz cabaret show playing the character 'Virginia Divine', then 'Jazz Hot' followed quickly after in the Fall, and in September Oscar winning director Jim Sheridan wrote a role for her in his film "In America". October 2002 found her again writing, designing, and producing with her Dublin Fringe Festival 2002 hit show "All About Love", which was sold-out for almost all of its week long run. Maria was invited back to the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2003 to create a show specifically for the opulent 'Spiegeltent' and the resulting "Lush Life" packed out the venue and received rave reviews along the way. Her first ever Christmas show "Once Upon A Christmas" was created especially for The Helix in Dublin in Dec. 2003 and again sold-out. Cabaret shows "Torch Song" (2004) and "Night & the City" (2005), “Torch” (2006), and “Red, Hot, and Tecce” (2007) followed after and consequently toured Ireland, Europe, USA, and the U.K.
      Maria also co-starred  (as lesbian cowgirl 'Lee') in the European premiere of the Canadian play "Very Heaven" by Ann Lambert running in the Stalislavsky-based Focus Theatre in Dublin 2004. A role was especially written for her to act in the recent American re-make of "The Honeymooners", shot on location in Dublin in 2004 and is due for release in 2005, which stars the likes of Eric Stoltz, Cedric The Entertainer, and John Leguizamo ("Romeo & Juliet", "Moulin Rouge") and even Oscar award-winning director Jim Sheridan wrote her a role for his movie "In America" after meeting the actress in Dublin. Maria toured with Storytellers Theatre Company’s critically acclaimed and award-nominated “Dream of a Summer’s Day” (Ireland 2005), and starring in the Theatre Royal's new production of the German one-woman cabaret show “Tonight: Lola Blau” in (Ireland 2006) to ecstatic critical praise.  
       Kicking off 2007, Maria co-starred in Big Telly Theatre Co.'s (U.K.) new production of “The Country Boy” on its 2 month international tour.   She was also snapped up to play murdered wife 'Isabella' alongside British star Martin Shaw in the new BBC television series 'Inspector Gentley'  and appears in a cameo role as a cabaret singer in the new ITV television series 'Rock Rivals'.

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