Composer and singer Maria Alejandra Quintanilla has been shaped by her immigrant single mother, her music-loving grandfather, her artist husband, an adventurous creative spirit, and a deep belief in the power of education. All these have earned Quintanilla, a Frost School of Music jazz vocal doctoral student, and Henry Mancini Fellow, a series of prestigious awards and scholarships.
The latest is a $25,000 Scholar Award from the P.E.O. Sisterhood, given to just 100 women doctoral students from the United States and Canada. Founded in 1869, the group is the two countries’ oldest women’s philanthropic organization, with nearly a quarter of a million members, and supports higher education for women.
“It’s huge,” says Quintanilla of the P.E.O. award. She plans to use the funds for her doctoral research into extended vocal techniques, part of her exploration of experimental musical forms, which she blends into a strikingly original expression with other artistic genres.
A scholarship for women seeking education perfectly suits Quintanilla, whose single mother, seeking better opportunities than she could find as a woman in her native Peru, came to L.A. with her six-month-old daughter. Quintanilla’s mother went on to get a master’s degree and become an elementary school teacher.
“My mother instilled in me that education was very important, something that can change our lives,” Quintanilla says.
She wanted to sing from the time she was small. Her first musical inspiration - and father figure - was her beloved grandfather, who regularly visited them in L.A. and passed on his love of music and singing to his granddaughter. “He had a great big booming tenor voice, and at any party, he would perform – Peruvian folk songs, opera, beautiful boleros,” says Quintanilla, who pays tribute to her grandfather in a moving song and video on her website. “He taught me songs in different languages, Spanish and Italian. He planted a big seed in me.”
Quintanilla played flute, sang in choirs in public middle and high schools in L.A., and studied jazz vocals at California State University Long Beach. It was then she met her husband and artistic partner Renato Diz, a pianist and composer, when he proposed collaborating after hearing a song she posted in an online forum. They bonded personally and musically, and Quintanilla graduated a year early, in 2015, to move to New York City. With the city as their playground, he helped expand her musical horizons.
“He opened my eyes and ears and palate to what art could be,” Quintanilla says. “Living in New York, where there’s so much to explore, I fell in love with modern art, abstract painting, and music that didn’t have a clear form. That really ignited something in me. I started to discover more of who I am, not just as a vocalist, but in other art forms and the creativity we have within us.”
This has led Quintanilla to incorporate visual art and writing – she also paints, photographs, and writes poetry - and ideas from those forms, in her music. The first of two albums she created with Diz, 2016’s “Distance Chemistry,” on their label W&J Productions, is a live recording with improvised versions of jazz standards and what she calls spontaneous compositions. For her May 2023 Frost doctoral recital, she interpreted contemporary paintings with a mix of composed and improvised music. Her rich, shimmering voice can be throatily, movingly emotional on traditional jazz songs or soar virtuosically through clicks and hisses and animalistic hoots in experimental fare. Frost Chair of Studio Music and Jazz John Daversa calls Quintanilla "a true artist" and praises her “relentless vulnerability, fearless honesty, technical confidence, and pure expression of the human experience.”
Meanwhile, she earned her master’s degree in jazz studies at the State University of New York – Purchase College in 2017. She’s received exceptional support for her studies; the first artist to receive the Ella Fitzgerald Scholarship for both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees; one of three out of 500,000 SUNY students to win the State University of New York’s Thayer Fellowship for outstanding artistic achievement. She’s performed at New York’s famed Blue Note Jazz Club and Jazz at Lincoln Center with the Purchase Jazz Orchestra and on her own or with Diz at New York’s Summerstage and festivals in Montreal, Portugal, and Africa.
In 2020, as the pandemic forced the newly married couple to spend eight months holed up in their Harlem studio apartment (Quintanilla calls it “the world’s longest honeymoon”), they decided to get their doctoral degrees. They chose the Frost School for the way it embraced musical experimentation and exploration. “The teachers and program in general are open, and not all programs have that,” Quintanilla says.
She praises her Frost advisor Kate Reid, jazz vocal program director, for supporting her as an artist and educator; a Graduate Teaching Assistant, Quintanilla managed day-to-day operations while Reid was on sabbatical. Quintanilla currently leads the Jazz Vocal II ensemble and has taught privately since 2010. She is inspired by how Daversa has found success and fulfillment in both his artistic and educational careers.
“I’m getting this degree because I love to teach, and this work is a natural evolution of my life as an artist,” Quintanilla says.
