Maria Ioudenitch

Born in Russia, violinist Maria Ioudenitch immigrated with her musical family to the U.S. at the age of two and grew up in Kansas City. In 2021, she received first prizes in the Ysaÿe International Music Competition, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition and the Joseph Joachim International Competition. She also received numerous special prizes at these competitions, including Joachim’s Chamber Music Award, the prize for Best Interpretation of the Commissioned Work, the Henle Urtext Prize, and a recording deal with Warner Classics.
Recognized for her innovative programmes, her first album on Warner – Songbird with pianist Kenneth Broberg, scheduled for release on 24 March 2023 – spans from Franz Schubert, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann to Nikolai Medtner, Richard Strauss and Nadia Boulanger. In upcoming concerts, she performs the Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Barber concertos as well as Haydn’s G-Major and Mozart’s D-Major concertos and Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, while this season’s recital programmes include works by George Gershwin, William Grant Still, Dolores White and Fazil Say, alongside standard violin repertoire.

In the coming months, Maria Ioudenitch makes her debuts with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (at Berlin’s Philharmonie), MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker and Münchner Symphoniker and returns to Kansas City Symphony. Recent engagements have taken her to the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, the Mariinsky Orchestra, Lithuania Chamber Orchestra and Utah Symphony, while her growing list of conductors includes names like Andrey Boreyko, Alpesh Chauhan, Kevin John Eudesei, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Andrew Manze, Ruth Reinhardt and Hugh Wolff. She is also an active chamber musician and will take part in the chamber music tours of the Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute with Miriam Fried in March and the Marlboro Music Festival with Christoph Richter in November 2023.

Maria began playing violin with Gregory Sandomirsky at the age of three and continued her studies with Ben Sayevich at the International Center for Music in Kansas City and Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music. She completed her master’s degree and Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried has been mentored by Sonia Simmenauer this past year as part of Simmenauer’s new initiative, zukunfts.music. She is currently in the Professional Studies programme at the Kronberg Academy, working with Christian Tetzlaff.

Maria plays a violin by the Brothers Amati from ca. 1624, courtesy of Guarneri Hall NFP and Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins in Chicago.