Anna Maria Manalo is a multi-dimensional musician based in New York, who’s active as a pianist, violinist, and composer. Her performance credits range from Abelardo Hall (Manila) to the Overture Center (Madison), and from MacEwan University (Edmonton) to New York’s High Line. No matter where she’s making music, Anna’s goal is to provoke positive change—a shift in her listeners—so that they experience life from new vantage points.

A consummate collaborator, Anna designs programs that address relevant themes and spark insights and discussion with audiences. She’s created a series of programs, Music and Microbes, that plumbs the connection between science and art in programs featuring works by Chopin, Schubert and Tchaikovsky. Anna also co-created a gallery installation performance for artwork focused on race, improvising on the violin using Ancient Filipino songs over her original piano tracks at Stony Brook University’s Zuccaire Gallery.

As a composer, Anna has premiered her works at the Philippine Consulate and at the UN. Her music has also been heard at the Pan Asian Music Festival in San Francisco, at the University of Chicago, and at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian Church in Madison. Exploring temporality and technology, Anna’s music combines layers of live and pre-recorded improvisations, which often reference her Filipino roots.

With a commitment to bringing concert music to vulnerable audiences, Anna directs a bi-monthly chamber music series at the Gathering Place, a homeless shelter for women and LGBTQ moms in Denver, CO. Anna also directs the MCP Chamber Music Healing series in New York at Mt. Sinai Hospitals, as well as two chamber music series in Alberta, Canada: for The Cross Cancer Institute and for the Mazankowski Heart Clinic.

With degrees in piano and violin from CUNY Hunter College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Anna studied composition at the Aspen Music School and received Music Therapy Training from University of Alberta, Canada.

Upcoming projects include writing music for “Oy, Father,” the story of a Jesuit Priest and Jewish Cantor who meet through music lessons, fall in love, get married, and then write a musical about it. This season she also premiers works composed for her alongside works by Caroline Shaw and James Cohn in a program with cellist Sonna Kim and percussionist Rex Benincasa.