MARIA PALMQVIST
singer - composer
"Music is my haven. The one place where I can fully exist.
I never found a place where I could feel wholeheartedly comfortable, where I could truly belong. My artistic universe is where I find peace. Although abstract and intangible in the sense that it neither can be touched nor seen by others, to me, it holds the most real, natural and palpable existence. It is a universal version of me as a person that encompasses my thoughts, feelings, colours, shapes, words and all senses intertwined.
Singing is the voice of my heart."
Maria Palmqvist is a singer based in Gothenburg, originally from the town of Karlsborg, Sweden. She has worked as a freelance musician since 2015.
Many years have been devoted to music studies and she holds a Bachelor degree and a Masters degree in improvisation from the Academy of Music and Drama in Gothenburg. She easily moves between genres and expressions but is mainly active within the fields of improvisation, alternative pop, musical theatre, and contemporary music. In addition to creating original music, she works in a range of projects as well as making soloist performances.
Maria is a composer and a singer whose creations stems from the heart. The lyrics and the music are conveyed with urgency and sincerity, leaving space for the text to breathe and the voice to bloom. Here, everything from sheer whispers to big power ballads take place - always with the voice at the core.
Full-length album Take My Yoke was released in 2021 and EP
If I Broke in 2023. Next full-length album is in the making where her love of literature plays an important part; poems by William Blake and the novel The Road by Corman McCarthy are interpreted and act as sources of inspiration.
Some of her other collaborations include; Bohuslän Big Band, Gothenburg Wind Orchestra, Lena Willemark, Lindha Kallerdahl, Vilhelm Blomgren, Viva Vocal Ensemble, Lauri Kadalipp Ensemble, Walter Lang and Darkthrone Forest. She has toured in Germany and in the Faroe Islands and played as supporting act to Danish artist Pernille Rosendahl. In 2019 she was a soloist on Swedish television's Midsummerprogram and together with the production company Stagebird she has created the concert program Nog Hade Jag Drömmar which is available for booking.
Photo: Constance E.T. de Tourniel
Projects & Collaborations
Maria Palmqvist
A project where all text and music come from me, sometimes together with a band, sometimes on duo and sometimes solo. The music draws inspiration from improvisatory allusions of jazz, pure harmonies of classical music and structural elements of pop music. I strive for a flow of sincerity in my work where vulnerability and inner power are allowed to co-exist. My wish is for my music to offer a safe place for the listener to swing back and forth between different emotions, thoughts, and sensations. The music covers themes of anxiety, self-doubt, the wish to be loved, and questions of existence. Corner stones of what constitutes a life.
Karl Magnús Andersson – piano, synthesisers
Malin Almgren – drums
Viktor Reuter – double bass, electric bass, synth bass
Nog Hade Jag Drömmar
Nog Hade Jag Drömmar is a concert program in collaboration with the stage company Stagebird. Created, written, and directed by me and performed together with bass player Viktor Reuter. A concert program about fate, female artistry, and dreams. This is told through the story of my own grandmother’s dreams, intertwined with the music and destinies of three radiant artists: Maria Callas, Amy Winehouse and Monica Zetterlund. The show touches upon questions on what it entails to be a female artist in an industry dominated by men and examines how dreams stand in close relation to the rises and falls of an artistic carrier.
https://stagebird.se/konsertprogram/
Solist assignments
Photo: Johan Carlén
Soloist in Midsummer-concert on Swedish television, SVT, in 2019. Performed together with Stefan Wingefors on piano and double-bass and Mattias Bylund on piano.
Photo from video by: Donovan von Martens, Magnus Bergström
The composition En Dag, a duet specially written for Swedish grammy-winner Lena Willemark and Gothenburg Wind Orchestra, performed in October 2020.
Private engagements
I am also available for private engagements and
frequently sings at weddings and funerals.
For information about private
performances, please contact me at:
karinmariapalmqvist [at] gmail [dot] com
I will get back to you as soon as possible!
