Maria Raducanu

ARTIST: Maria Raducanu

COUNTRY: Romania

GENRE: An explosive mingling of Romanian ethos and nowadays music (blues, jazz, avant-garde…)

MORE ABOUT: Maria Raducanu, singer and songwriter, was born in Husi, Romania, in 1967. Encouraged by her father, she started to play violin and guitar at a very young age, but by the time she was 15 years old she had already “discovered” her voice… a voice so hard to describe. Maria Tanase and Edith Piaf were a big influence.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY:

- “Pure Music” (2008) with Krister Jonsson (guitar)
- “Troika” (2005) with M. Belciug (guitar)
- “La Tarara” (2005) with M. Belciug (guitar)
- “Chants du Levant” (2005) with Jan Roder (bass)
- “Lumini” (2004) with Mircea Tiberian (piano)
- “Viata Lumij” (2003) with Mircea Tiberian Quartet
- “Colinde” (2002) with V. Golcea (double bass) and S. Romanescu (guitar)
- “Pe vale” (2002) with V. Golcea (double bass) and S. Romanescu (guitar) (nominated for The Best Jazz Discography Creation award)

SELECTED VIDEOS:

SELECTED PRESS REVIEWS AND QUOTES:

“Sitting cross-legged on a small street in Paris or standing on the stage of some Philharmonic, her singing finds its place under the same Dostoyevsky’s creed that beauty will save the world. Maria Raducanu doesn’t sing for the snobs, although her music is of great refinement.” (Maxim Belciug, Dilema magazine)

“Maria Raducanu is like no other before her – her pure sound does not resemble anybody else’s one although she sings Maria Tanase’s songs as well as other pieces of folk music, along with Portuguese Fado, songs of dirge and joy in so many foreign languages, as she is endowed with the genius capability to “sing” in various dialects and to liltingly phrase things in the language, like a poet. Her “choreography” is also a pure and deeply personal one, whereby a figure reminiscent of Brancusi’s “Prayer” looms dimly, meditating on Providence by dint of singing, somehow kneeling without touching the floor with her knees as if “levitating” the way saints raptured by the Holy Ghost do. Still, Maria Raducanu, “a lass from Husi”, started by studying Literature and Philology first and it was only then that she made a mark in Music by translating Romanian traditional lays into a unique and never heard before style. (…) That particular spiritual and bodily mood rich in harmony, which puts me in mind of not only Orpheus but the art of shamans too, as well as those tempting fairy spell-chants (also documented in Swedish folklore and held in great esteem in the culture) and their singing and dancing in circles. Those features amount to a gift for enchanting the listeners, for infecting them with a healing state of mind which the ancient Greeks would call KATHARSIS.” (in “The Poetics of Romanian Jazz” by Gabriela Melinescu, Romania Literara)

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