Concerts | Klankhaven

Maria Valentina Chirico is a soprano singer with a background in baroque, classical and contemporary music. She graduated in vocal chamber music, studied in Berlin and Turin, and has performed in various theaters and festivals, expanding her repertoire of sacred and contemporary music. In 2021 she performed alongside fellow students from the electronic music course in Turin the composition 'Shofar Rags XXL' by sound artist Alvin Curran, co-founder of the Italy-based live acoustic/electronic improvisational group Musica Elettronica Viva.

She has been in love with the sound of the harmonium since she was a child, and later started collecting ‘forgotten’ harmoniums from churches and older musicians. In 2018, on the night of St Nicholas, she received a handmade, portable Harmonium from Klaus Langer Harmoniumwerkstatt.

Valentina's compositions appear theater and cinema, and focussing on themes such as fairy tales, songs about animals, children, plants and dreams. She's featured, for instance, in the independent film INITIALE by Susann Carmen Jagodzińska, based on a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke and in a newly composed score for the 1902 short movie 'The Little Match Seller' by early British film pioneer James Williamson, based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale 'The Little Match Girl'.