Maria Belva

Maria Belva is a professional choral conductor and private voice teacher and serves as Director of Horizon Voices—4 youth choirs for children in grades K-12, and Sweetest in the Gale—an auditioned women’s choir at Classical Uprising in Portland, Maine. She is the founder of the Grand Monadnock Youth Choirs in Peterborough, NH. and served as the organization’s director for 20 years, from its beginning in 1997 until 2017. She was Music Director of the Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church for two decades and has taught choral music in various private schools in New Hampshire. A life-long chorister, she sings in choirs wherever she lives. Belva has maintained a private voice studio since 1992 and is a Certified McClosky Voice Technician. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Education from State University of New York at Potsdam and a Master of Music from University of Maine, Orono.

Maria lives in Portland with her husband David. They have 4 children and 7 grandchildren between them, with one more grandchild on the way. Maria loves to garden, read, hike (most recently to the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine), and to play with her grandchildren.