María del Sol Music

“When music touches the soul, the world changes,” says María del Sol, the New York City-based Chilean pianist on the verge of releasing her first single.

As a composer, María del Sol ardently speaks about feelings of victory, transcendence, and self-empowerment as she seeks to communicate them through her music. Her much anticipated new single, Funeral for Past Loves, awaits release - along with its music video premiere - on February 14th, 2020. Its title and Valentine’s Day launch are not coincidental. “It’s about loving and reclaiming yourself and choosing to live from your authentic center. The track builds momentum to a cathartic explosion of triumphant reemergence from the ashes of heartache, loneliness, and loss to finally experience peace within yourself,” she explains.

Funeral for Past Loves is her debut release to the general public and, while the track was inspired by her personal journey, it was a concert given by composer Ludovico Einaudi in late 2017 that propelled María del Sol back to creating her own music after years of a compositional halt. “That night was a total revelation for me. As I was finding my way to reconnect back to who I am, this concert opened up a whole new world of possibilities,” she says.

Her training as a classical pianist was naturally influenced by such composers as Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Satie. In recent years that model has been further enhanced by modern international artists. These include the hypnotic vocal inflections of Simrit as well as the mysterious melodic turns and drones as delivered by Ravi Shankar and his daughter, Anoushka Shankar.

This evolution has created María del Sol’s avant-garde style — a mix of piano solo with electronic and nature sounds, structured into exotic scales and sustained tones that seduce the listener into a trance-like world of intense emotions. It is these emotions, along with her intuitive sense of drama, that also serve her well in her other musical undertaking, her passion for film music.

In 2018, María del Sol was discovered by filmmaker Agatino Zurría, who immediately approached her to score his short film, Interview With Marilyn. “I had never done something like that before and had no idea how to do it. I was terrified, but decided to accept the challenge anyway,” the composer recalls. A year later, she was named winner of Best Original Score at the July edition of the Florence Film Awards in Italy.

This recognition coincided with fulfilling her dream of moving to New York and attending one of the top Screen Scoring graduate programs in the US at New York University. “I knew that’s where I wanted to be, so that’s the only school I applied to,” she remarks.

Even as the great metropolis of New York City offers exposure to some of the finest art in the world, María del Sol maintains a conscious and healthy lifestyle that connects her back to nature and her authentic self. She has a daily meditation practice and believes in living in the flow of life by cultivating her own reality from within. “When people listen to my music, I want them to feel the inner-fire that I feel. I want them to feel like they can fly and reach their dreams. I want my music to elevate and bring light to this planet; to build a bridge between the invisible world, and day to day life.”