Bio
Amalia (Maya) Osuga enjoys a wide range of opportunities as concert soloist and chamber musician. A native New Yorker consistently praised for her “thrilling coloratura” and the “unrelenting authenticity” of her musical interpretations, recent solo engagements include: Brahm’s A German Requiem with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra and Handel’s Messiah with Orchestra Sul Ponticello. She has appeared as soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Fauré’s Requiem and Mendelssohn’s A Mid-summer Night’s Dream at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall. Hailed by composer Geoffrey Burgon for creating a “perfect performance atmosphere” in the New York premiere of his piece Christ Love at the 92nd Street Y, Osuga continues to share her passion for conveying music’s unique expressive elements to a wide variety of audiences.
An artist with a particular interest in art song, Osuga has appeared in recital throughout the United States and in Great Britain, where she premiered works by composers Gregers Brinch and Francis Rainey. She is the founder of Her Art in Song, a grant-funded project focused on highlighting the musical and poetic voices of women in art song through performance, education and research. Recent performances include Millay: A Century of Song presented as part of the Constellation Concert Series featuring songs by Margaret Bonds, Sheila Silver, H. Leslie Adams, and Joshua Burel (world premiere), among others, set to poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
A sought after collaborator for contemporary chamber music, Osuga was featured as a guest artist with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra singing Burel’s Blue Means Water, a work written for her for soprano and chamber orchestra with text by award winning non-fiction writer, Dionisia Morales. Upcoming collaborations include recitals in Alabama and Tennessee with organist Jillian Gardner.
Maya is also a lifetime choral singer and conductor who got her start as a member of the award-winning YPC of New York City under the direction of Francisco Núñez. She has sung at the Oregon Bach Festival under Matthew Halls and with the award-winning University of Oregon Chamber Choir under Sharon Paul. Currently, Osuga is the soprano in Element, a professional quartet bringing diverse choral programs to audiences throughout the Southeast.
Osuga holds degrees in music from Swarthmore College (BA), the University of Montana (MM), and the University of Oregon (DMA), where she studied under Milagro Vargas. The 2017-2018 recipient of the University of Oregon (UO) Teaching Excellence Award for studio voice, Dr. Osuga enjoys sharing her passion for the art of singing with students in applied voice, group voice, lyric diction and opera workshop. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Voice at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.
-Madeleine L ‘Engle