Maiani da Silva

Profession and title: 
Violinist; Lecturer, Yale School of Music
Brief biography: 
Maiani da Silva is a contemporary violinist, performer, arranger, and educator.  She is a member of the four-time Grammy-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird, co-founder of performance-art duo The Furies, as well as Lecturer at Yale’s Department of Music and a Trotter Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Oregon (2023). She has premiered concertos with the Cincinnati Symphony and the U.S. Navy Band, premiered staged works by David Lang/Anne Bogart, and has also collaborated with Bang On a Can All-Stars, Electric Earth Concerts, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Wild Up, Louis Andriessen, Viet Cuong, Ted Hearne, Nina Shekhar, Childish Gambino, George Lewis, Taylor Mac, Julianna Barwick, Joe Hisaishi, and more. 
 
Maiani studied under the tutelage of Irina Muresanu at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Mela Tenenbaum in Brooklyn, N.Y.  Other mentors include Lenny Matczynski, and Andrew Mark. Maiani is also an Artist in Residence and Fellow at Yale University’s Morse College. 
 
Maiani was born in Bahia, Brazil, grew up in Los Angeles, and also lived in Boston, Paris, Mexico City, and San Francisco before settling in woodsy Connecticut. Maiani also enjoys in-person philosophical debates, traveling the world, and reading about evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology and primatology. Listening to 90s slow-jams and Motown always lifts her spirits.