Maria Papathanasiou has graduated with a Masters in Performance in the orchestral training of the Oboe with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, UK. She also holds a Bachelor in Music from the Department of Music Science & Art, University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, Greece. Maria also has a degree in the baroque recorder. She has been awarded many times for her music skills and she has been generously supported during her studies with scholarships regarding her musicianship.
Maria has always been passionate about the oboe and the recorder. She first fell in love with the magical relationship between the air and the wooden instrument, which becomes alive through the process of breathing when she was only 5 years old. At the age of 12 she was enchanted by the sound of the oboe and since then she has been devoted to music performance and music education.
Maria lives in London and works as a musician, artist, music educator and teacher. She has performed and collaborated in projects with the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC, the Philarmonia, the Barbican Centre and more. She has been invited to perform in various festivals and projects where music meets and collaborates with the other arts (literature, poetry, theatre, dance, painting).
While she loves being on stage and she is enchanted by the communication which music performance can bring with an audience, she has also developed a strong interest for music education and teaching. She coaches young players for projects with renowned orchestras and conductors like Valery Gergiev and Gustavo Dudamel and she teaches the oboe and the recorder. She has also made a thorough academic research upon music pedagogy and various learning styles, the results of which she applies in her teaching and her coaching. She will be presenting a paper upon her values in music education in the World Conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) in Glasgow, in July 2016.
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