Maiani da Silva
Maiani (maya-ní) da Silva's
musical portrait consists of two main parts:
A solid cultural foundation from her musically rich country, Brazil—kept very much alive by her parents after immigrating to the US at age 6—and contemporary classical music,
a category of music with a wide scope of styles
too exciting to narrowly define.
Maiani first picked up the violin at age 8 thanks to public schooling with Ms. Carol Dobbs in
South Central Los Angeles and has since performed, taught, and recorded internationally. For more details with lots of name dropping, please check out her bio below.
Maiani is a contemporary violinist, performer, arranger, and educator. She is the violinist with the four-time Grammy-winning Eighth Blackbird, founder of Brouhaha, and the co-founder of The Furies, an experimental performance-art duo. With the former, Maiani was a featured soloist for world premieres of concerti grossi with Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the United States Navy Band in 2022. Both ensembles were featured among other contemporary artists in CAP UCLA’S Tune In Festival 2021.
Not one to shy away from bold interdisciplinary productions, Maiani premiered
David Lang's composition as explanation, a staged work for Eighth Blackbird directed by the legendary Anne Bogart for Duke Performances.
Maiani has collaborated with various other cutting-edge artists—both in the contemporary classical realm and beyond—from Bang on a Can, Louis Andriessen, David Lang, Viet Cuong, Ted Hearne, Wild Up, Nina Shekhar, to Childish Gambino, Peter Gabriel, Kanye West, Julianna Barwick, and Taylor Mac, among others.
In 2021 Maiani joined the faculty of Yale's Department of Music as Lecturer and
Robert M. Trotter Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Oregon (2023), specializing in the performance of contemporary chamber music. She is also an Artist in Residence and Fellow at Yale's Morse College.
Maiani studied under the tutelage of Irina Muresanu at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Mela Tenenbaum in Brooklyn, N.Y. Other mentors include Lenny Matczynski and Andrew Mark.
Maiani was born in Bahia, Brazil, grew up in Los Angeles, and also lived in Boston, Paris, Mexico City, and San Francisco before settling in woodsy Connecticut. Maiani also enjoys in-person philosophical debates, reading about evolutionary biology and primatology, and listening to Motown and 90s slow-jams.