Maria Thompson Corley was born in Jamaica and raised in Canada. She has appeared on radio, television, and/or concert stages in Canada, the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, Bermuda and Europe, both as a solo and collaborative artist, including performances in Budapest at the Liszt Academy, and in Carnegie Recital Hall, Aaron Davis Hall and Alice Tully Hall, all in New York City.
She has collaborated with such artists as Metropolitan Opera soprano Priscilla Baskerville, Juno Award-winning clarinetist James Campbell, Grammy-winning clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati, Grammy-nominated baritone Randall Scarlata, and members of the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras. Her appearances include a collaboration with countertenor Darryl Taylor in a concert sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and a solo recital at the Epidaurus Festival in Cavtat, Croatia. Her performances as soloist with orchestra include engagements with the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gunther Schuller. She has also performed and recorded with the Philadelphia-based Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, directed by Jeri-Lynne Johnson.
She is also a composer and arranger, with pieces commissioned and/or recorded by Juventas New Music Ensemble, the Florida A&M University Concert Choir, MUSE: Cincinnati’s Womens Choir, the Tallahassee Boys Choir, Xavier University in New Orleans, California State University East Bay, tubist Daniel Rowland, countertenor Darryl Taylor and sopranos Sequina Dubose, Louise Toppin and Randye Jones. Her music has been sung by artists such as mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis, who has performed at La Scala, and soprano Nadine Benjamin, who has performed at Glyndebourne.
Dr. Corley’s arrangement of “Mary Had a Baby” is published by Walton Music Corporation. Her song cycle Grasping Water has been added to the curricula of courses about art song at University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Jackdaws Music Education Trust in the U.K., and University of California (Irvine). Dr. Corley’s cycle For Terry is published by Classical Vocal Reprints. Her art song “Big Yellow Taxi” was featured on the Hampsongs Foundation website on July 4, 2020, a few weeks after she participated in a livestreamed panel discussion that included Thomas Hampson, Louise Toppin, Bill Banfield and Mark Clague. Her debut mini-opera, The Sky Where You Are, commissioned by An Opera Theatre in 2020, is part of the Decameron Opera Coalition’s award-winning online production, Tales From a Safe Distance. The entire series was added to the Library of Congress in 2021.
She was commissioned by Lyric Opera of the North to write The Place for the DOC’s second online anthology, Heroes, which premiered in October, 2021. Two of her spirituals have been choreographed by Katlyn Addison, a prima ballerina with Ballet West. The Canadian Art Song Project has also commissioned her to write art songs for soprano Jonelle Sills, to be premiered in 2022. She was also the co-recipient of an Opera America IDEA grant, along with librettist Diana Solomon-Glover, for The Boy from Troy, an operatic work to be completed by the end of the same year which is scheduled to premiere in Carnegie Hall in 2023.
