Born in Peru, avant-turntablist Maria Chavez currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. With a collection of new and broken needles that she calls "pencils of sound" and a selection of records, she creates electro-acoustic sound pieces.
Chavez made her New York City debut in a duet with Thurston Moore, collaborated with Otomo Yoshihide as part of the 2007 Wien Modern Festival, and recently shared a stage with Pauline Oliveros and Lydia Lunch during Vienna's Phonofemme Festival 2009.
Having also performed at such internationally acclaimed venues as STEIM (Amsterdam) and Sonoteca (Lima, Peru), she was awarded a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Grant by New York's Roulette Intermedium in 2008. In June and July, 2008, she was selected to be part of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as an artist in residence for a series of performances in and around Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses sculptures at DIA: Beacon.
Chavez recently completed the score for a short film by video artist David Gacs and performing artist Matthew Day entitled "Through my Geography," which can be viewed on her MySpace page.
This September, she will perform at San Francisco's Electronic Music Festival, a turntable festival in October in Berlin entitled T.I.T.O, in Gdansk and Krakow, Poland, Prague and more performamces to be announced.
Fellow sound artist and writer Tara Rodgers will include an interview with Chavez in Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound, to be published by Duke University Press in 2009/10.
Beyond the realm of sound, in 2006 Chavez co-founded Houndstooth:Fine Vintage for Men, a boutique in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that specializes in men's vintage clothing and accessories. The store's visionary, she spearheaded buying, merchandising, private styling, and services geared to the fashion, movie, and music industries. As Houndstooth recently closed to physical structural problems with it's location, Chavez has decided to focus on her sound career in lieu of opening a larger store.
 
http://www.myspace.com/mariachavez