Margaret Maria Music

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I have some awesome news to share and as I build my community around me, I would be most grateful for your help and assistance. ‘Music Can Change the World’ is the umbrella that all my projects will be unfolding under.  The world needs community, sharing, empathy and passionate change-makers to keep shining their light.  The children are watching and listening…and we can definitely help their world be more kind and compassionate, especially at the worst of times. 

So please let me know if you are able to join my team as a volunteer, or a sponsor or donor of some of the incredible initiatives that I am a part of and am also building from scratch. 

PLEASE COME AND/OR TELL YOUR FRIENDS: 

March 16, 2:30pm (Montreal) Bourgie Hall - La Salle Bourgie - ‘Between Worlds’ - I have my composer debut at Bourgie Hall coming soon. It is featuring the great soprano Donna Brown, the Molinari String Quartet, the great harpist Frédérique Cambreling in 3 compositions of mine: String Quartet no.1 ‘The Golden Mean’, ‘I am Breathing Stars’ and my song cycle ‘Between Worlds’ (where I join the ensemble on cello). Please come and also spread the word to your Montreal friends. I definitely need your support in filling the hall. 

APPLY TODAY or SPREAD THE WORD TO THOSE WHO WOULD LOVE TO ATTEND:

Please consider joining me in Italy for 2 weeks at my genre-fluid ‘Creativity, Composition and Improv’ retreat. Applications are now open. 

BIIMA: For two weeks, a group of peer musicians, composers, and avid creators, gather for a one-of-a-kind inspirational retreat. Set amid the stunning backdrop of the medieval town of Breno, I guide a uniquely creative journey of exploration, contemplation, unlimited ‘seeds of creativity’, and ultimately pushing beyond perceived boundaries into the expansive depths of their creativity.

SUPPORT OR DONATE:

If you know of anyone who could support the scholarships for Composers across Canada to attend, please let me know. 

How You Can Make an Impact

Your support will directly fund scholarships for emerging and established composers. Contributions can be made through our esteemed partners, the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) and the Association of Women Composers (ACWC), both of which provide tax receipts for all donations:

• CMC Donations: click here (Focus on emerging composers who are not yet Associate Composer Members and genre-fluid creators.)
• ACWC Donations: click here (Focus on women and women-identifying composers across Canada who are members of the ACWC. Please select "Fund 03 ACWC Scholarship for the Breno Italy International Music Academy.”)

ENJOY 

‘Notes of Love’ a special fundraiser for OrKidstra with the National Arts Centre Orchestra (my former band 😊) was a huge success.  I conducted a few pieces on the program, but the highlight for me was watching our kids playing side by side with my colleagues, while they performed my music ‘Spring’, which I conducted!  It was a full-circle moment for me and I share a few photos and clip links here: 

Spring with NACO and OrKidstra

Photos of NACO and OrKidstra by Greggory Clark

There's more in development.  Please keep in touch with me and I'd love to hear back from you as I keep creating. You can reach me directly from the contact page here: Contact Link

Hugs and Love, 

Margaret Maria. 

This little song I jotted out in October, is now ready to fly out into the world.  Music that stems from a deep love of the world and the loving energy we create and share with one another.  It also has come at a time where I am deeply contemplating the state of the world and our inability to love that which is different, or opposing to us.  I feel that if we were to love one another without limitations, we would be able to find peace. 

This contemplation is all written out in my latest music called ‘A Love Lesson' that's up on my SoundCloud page. 

For me, love means to fracture and repair, always coming back to repair and care. Love is the desire and effort to go deeper. It is doing the inner work to regulate our own nervous systems to be able to give love to the child we were, and know we are no longer in danger or threat, and can take care of ourselves with deep love and compassion towards ourselves. Love is a choice and desire to let our partner be who they need to be as they grow into the best they can be. Love is understanding and regulating one’s own system as the vehicle for being able to hold two opposing realities; our own needs and the needs and desires of our partner, without needing to control the outcome. Love is holding the grief of what we may feel for what we may desire and need while holding space for our partner to feel and think what they need too…and that these are not mutually exclusive, they are one. Love is loving ourselves into wholeness and then allowing for that love to open and hold space so that our partner can also love themselves into their wholeness. 

Four months ago, I met Tréson, a soul/reggae singer at a friend's Birthday party.  How and when we meet the humans in our life, is one of fate, but we create our own fate.  What we are searching for in the world, and what challenges we can handle, they come to find us at the right time. I started listening to Tréson's Reggae band, The Human Rights, and the message of peace and unity and love flowed over me.  I wrote ‘Music Can Change The World’ with their stage show in mind and as an anthem song for everyone to sing along with at the end of a show.  I also sat in front of my OrKidstra friends and sang it to them…just the cello pizzicato with my very shy vocals. We had just come back from a AIM ‘Academy for Impact Through Music’ conference in Chicago, where we connected with likeminded organizations that also want to change the trajectory of the world.  I dream of us singing it together.  The OrKidstra is my most precious and deep hopes, turned into action.  The OrKidstra is my family and the home for who I truly am…both music and feeling true belonging in my human form. It exemplifies the peace and love I dream that the whole world will one day embrace.  It is currently ‘in action’ at OrKidstra. 

This ‘pop style’ music is also out of my music production comfort zone!  My Rage Angel partner, Craig Robert McConnell (who is a pop mixing master!!) took the time to mix and master it for me so it pops out of the speakers!!!  I am so grateul for his support.  The drums were also recorded by the incredible Mark Kelso, who had the infinite patience to do 3 passes, until I was able to figure out how I wanted it to sound!! I don't speak drums well yet…so it was a journey! The offers to help and to spread this music around the world has been so heartwarming, I am so moved, words cannot express how it feels to have such kindness flow my way and towards this dream of mine. 

This new music moves me…it brings me to my knees in gratitude for my life. It brings me close to those that I love, and closer to those that are not so easy to love. It is bouyant and breathes life into me when I'm sad. It walks with me, when I am lonely.  It gives me the love that I need. It is my hope for the world. 

Tréson and I made this happen…against all odds and differences, we chose to love through music.  Music saved us.  This music exists because we were able to love through music, despite our differences.  So here is the result of what can happen when you love without limits and you put your heart out there, on that proverbial platter.  Music…can and will change the world. - MM. 

To participate in the project, please visit my page Music Can Change The World to find the stems and sheet music and upload/tag information.  It would be awesome for us to hear your voices all come together!! 

The most powerful force in my creative journey so far was my deep connection to the art and life force of my dear friend, the great Spanish Surrealist painter and sculptor, Ángel Muriel (the Archangel of Empaths) and such an intense connection of worlds! He was so generous in spirit and creative inspiration!! He gave his love and art to me freely…to use as I wished…he trusted my world and my music so deeply!!! He is not living in human form any longer, but his spirit is so strong…it is now within me…making me more powerful…

The Dying Angel's Lament

I wrote this music the day after my dear Ángel passed through...it was to be prophetic.  Everything about Ángel and Margaret Maria was divine love that has existed before our sprits met here on earth, and we found each other through our art.  

 Our 7 'Art in Divine Harmony' videos celebrate the inexplicable oneness of our worlds. 

Art In Divine Harmony

Today, his Goddess Euterpe is desolate and mourning…and it feels unbearable to know my friend is gone… 

But as the greatest artists we know, he left his heart, soul, spirit and absolute fucking genius in every tiny detail and brush stroke that is his brilliant and extraordinary art. I think he knew I would take in some of him as he passed through…he knew I could and would as his divine twin…so I will write our story and document our love and our divine ‘Art in Divine Harmony’ journey… 

And I will also watch into the future, as his paintings will sell for millions…as I remember how he struggled in his life to make ends meet…and how hard it was for him to sell his art so our project could come to full fruition!! And for every million of non-creative energy exchanged as he is applauded in death, I will remember the fire and the crucible that was his life’s suffering for his art and his vision…amd I will never forget how in the last years of his life, instead of painting and working on his art, he worked in a restaurant (and I knew it would kill his soul to wake up every day, not to his art, but to work that killed his heart…or maybe broke it first!!!)…and it will make me stronger… 

The Three of Diamonds forever a symbol of our deep devotion and love and artistry that holds no bounds and is limitless… 

My twin spirit has never really left me… 

So I don’t say goodbye…I get used to having a part of him with me always… 

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Shame On An Angel (link to YouTube)

The Goddess of edges has fallen into a conundrum. Her existence is a paradox and she feels taunted by the fates that allowed her to feel like this creature…entangling itself in ropes…dropping itself into a chicken coop during a storm…grounded. Whether they are mundane or magical can’t be discerned. What grounded them? Could they have prevented their predicament? Impeded by its enormous wings, on display and made to feel like a circus animal, the creature is poked and prodded, its shame deepening, tears spring to its eyes as the Angel is burnt to see if it is still alive. Waiting…waiting…waiting for its wings to regrow and gain the strength to fly again.

This music is inspired by the exquisite sculpture/installation made by Paul Fryer Studio called Morning Star 2008 and by the story: ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which inspired both the sculpture and the composer. Shame produces an implosion of the body: head lowered, eyes closed or hidden, and the upper body curved in on itself as if trying to be as small as possible (the bodily acting out of the wish to disappear).

The short story of Marquez does not provide a reason for the fall of the Angel. It is the composer who has extrapolated the predicament to create a reason that parallels that of the Goddess of Edges. Composer, cellist, producer, percussion (egg beater, milk frother, chop sticks, take out container, music stand, cello rib, spatula)- Margaret Maria

To see images of the sculpture/installation, please visit: www.paulfryer.net Instagram: paulfryerstudio

Loves Loving Love

‘The Goddess of Edges shows her heart and feels the tenderness of her lover gently caressing her face and letting her soar…her heart is singing, her spirit is dancing…she is speechless…how beautiful is this world of love…pure light is shining from within her.’ - M 

There is music constantly running through me.  I’m like an energy stash that stores up emotions and transforms them into music…and when I’m not in this process, I feel like something is wrong…like the wind goes out of my sails and I am rudderless.  So I create the energy I need to feel alive…the power of the love I need to feel…to recover, to heal and to breathe love into every note I make. 

Love is the only way I can survive…to be love…love in action…a day without love is a day wasted…a world without love is a world living inside darkness… 

I am sure now that love is our source…it is our life’s purpose and challenge and reason for being… 

To be curious and  brave, to find love in every tiny gesture, around every corner, within our deepest being, in every  moment, in every word we say and in every action we take… 

If the world were to truly love, the goddesses would rejoice…the world would heal…the secret of life would be revealed in its most divine… 

‘The artist recoils in pain and raises himself in defiance…knowing he deserves love and yet denies it to himself. He grasps to protect the innocence that is love…the innocence at the heart of life…rising to fight for that innocence…against all odds he is willing to sacrifice even himself…’ - Listen 3 - M.

The Goddesses rage against the so called god, who has made himself the arbitrator of humanity.  Killing at will, careless in his indiscriminate abuse of power over the helpless. The god who chooses suffering and evil over kindness and compassion, is not my god. This is not the god that I accept nor the creator of this world that I can live with. Everything in me rejects our existence…that such vile energy exists and was put on this earth.  The suffering of the artist depicted in such anguish and pain…through timeless space…it is too much to bear. 

Born in another time, I would have surely been burned at the stake. It doesn’t escape me now, that I live a very fortunate existence…in a peaceful country…shielded from most direct hits of earth’s horrors. Yet, I travel so fast through space and time…sometimes aimlessly shooting my energy out into the world where it is not being welcomed or received… 

Yet to stop, if I stop creating energy, the energy vital for my music to be found and born, then I feel absolutely helpless and devoid of purpose and that’s even more painful to sit in that discomfort. 

Which discomfort should I choose today? I choose the discomfort of burning…feeling the burning eyes and minds of pious humans…burning right through me…and of this god…who has placed burning inside me and inside those I love…those who can’t reciprocate because they are too afraid, or too hurt, or too confused…who’s bravery and voice has been taken away and their love hidden so far away…their energy withdrawing from my sphere… 

Here is all that misplaced energy…from my discomfort… 

Not sure you can enjoy this…it is not to enjoy…it is to experience and revel in the power of my energy… 

Burn Her…She Burns… 

‘Find what you love and let it kill you.’ - Charles Bukowski.

(I busted my bow in the production of this track 😞...but luckily it is able to be fixed and I will use my carbon fibre bow for the more violent articulations in the future!! Thank you to the SoundPost for helping me out with a loaner and David T. for the repair!)

I fight my trajectory every step of the way. I know what has to happen but I don’t want to go there, and yet there lies the most power I have in my body. 

To create in a state of receptivity to all my worlds colliding or aligning, all my feelings raw and exposed, I need to be unmistakably, abysmally, achingly, utterly bereft of help or solace or belonging to this world…taken over by the spirit world where my music exists and I just need to bring it inside me, towards me, welcome it with open arms and heart, with complete unadulterated bravery…with courage I can’t muster here on earth, but harnessing the courage and fear of the bravest souls who fight fear in their moments of truth…knowing that we are transient and made of stardust and we will return to dust soon enough. To find my music, I must dissolve into dust to become one with it…one with the star…and float in that agape uncertainty, which eventually turns into certainty but only as music…the music that I can float inside of and it saves me…one tiny note at a time, it saves me to create my future music…until my journey here is done. 

The Goddess of Edges lives between things…in a place of great energy and friction…she is liminal and achingly beautiful and transcendent in her balancing of the heavens and the earth.  She exists within me as I write this and as I search for this next music…she can bear the tension of paradox and the states of being that hover between particle and wave…seamlessly moving between the two. She is everywhere and she feels everything…she is this music…she and I are one.

As I sit here in Toronto looking out my window at my slice of peace, my mind and soul is hovering over the war in the Ukraine and the millions of people affected by tyranny and the mental illness of an individual who places no value on human life.  All of me is screaming at the injustice.  

None of us will get out of this life's journey alive...but surely if we know better, we must strive for that in every breath we breathe, in every decision we make. War must stop, selfishness on such a global scale must be thwarted.  I can only make this music...a symbol of good over evil...of the fight of everyday citizens of the Ukraine, arming themselves and fighting for their sovereignty.   

My music is a way of fighting...stop the war and find a way to limit the deaths and upheaval of hundreds of thousands of refugees who are fleeing.  This is unconscionable...every war is...all violence towards another fellow human being is... 

This music started out as this poem...after watching Russia invade the democratic Ukraine 5 days ago...and finished as a call for a miracle and honouring the bravery of the citizens who are staying to fight as the bombs keep falling. 

“I No Longer Pray For Peace” 

On the edge of war, one foot already in, 

I no longer pray for peace: 
I pray for miracles. 

I pray that stone hearts will turn 
to tenderheartedness, 
and evil intentions will turn 
to mercifulness, 
and all the soldiers already deployed 
will be snatched out of harm’s way, 
and the whole world will be 
astounded onto its knees. 

I pray that all the “God talk” 
will take bones, 
and stand up and shed 
its cloak of faithlessness, 
and walk again in its powerful truth. 

I pray that the whole world might 
sit down together and share 
its bread and its wine. 

Some say there is no hope, 
but then I’ve always applauded the holy fools 
who never seem to give up on 
the scandalousness of our faith: 
that we are loved by God…… 
that we can truly love one another. 

I no longer pray for peace: 
I pray for miracles. 

Poem by Ann Weems

My new album is about to be released and my own heart is in crisis.  This music has kept me company when my emotions were too overpowering to control.  I am so sad for the loss of something very special in my life and I don't know how to reconcile anything.  Life is just so unpredictable.  My great love has disappeared and I am searching.  I need this music now more than ever.  Maybe it will help those who hear it just as much as it is keeping the storm of life at bay from an undertow.  

About my new album: Feeling helpless limitation in my human form is a recurring theme throughout my life. But nothing has felt more helpless than the pandemic that paused 2020 around the globe with the fear of great loss of life in the world and close to home, followed by my own health issues and subsequent Covid near death experience that my sister had endured this year.  How we cope with being spirits in such an imperfect human world, how we bond, how we express, how we continue to remain strong, is a testament to who we are.  Expressing emotions and connecting with love and care to the world around us is all we really have in the end. We can’t hold onto anything or anyone, and it’s even more apparent when we are ill or gravely suffering.  This music is born of this helplessness in the hope that it can be helpful to others…it can offer some healing, some understanding, some comfort, some strength when we feel weak or when words fail us.

Words are failing me now...for now I will be quiet and let my music speak for me...for now...M.

Photo: Andy Wright Photography 

Stopping to think and reassess is where I'm at right now.  Nothing like a global pandemic to make us stop in our tracks as artists, to hear what needs to be said and expressed. So much music has run through me and into the world in the last 7 years since I quit my main job as cellist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.  11 studio albums later, 3 licensing albums, my first world premiere for full orchestra, becoming a Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, I am wondering where to turn next.  BTW, I never in my life imagined I would be a composer and in this place in my life (I just didn't know any of this music existed until it started opening up for me in my early 40's) Hence, this new website and the generous guidance of Steve Waxman, who brings to me a perspective that is opposite of where I came from.  What is my music?  What am I trying to say?  Where is my path leading to and why do I get lost sometimes? All of this to say, this crossroads is now a place to dream of what my music of the future will be.  

Check out my new website on Banzoogle...as it takes shape and expresses all the aspects of me and my music.