Maria Ventura will bring her unique voice and song-writing ability to center stage on Thursday, November 16th at Rick’s Music World in Raynham, Mass. where she will be the featured performer at Rick’s Open Mic. If you like acoustic indie pop and folk, you’ll want to catch this emerging talent who’s just recently released her first CD, Tear Bird Train.

Not many singer-songwriters can say they are a veteran of the stage at the age of 15, but Taunton’s own Maria Ventura can. Her first gig was in 2001 at which she played 3 songs with the band, Plymouth Rock in a small Providence club. She was 9. Since then, her musical career has traveled a fertile path from stage to stage, rich in live performance collaborations with her own who’s who of local and regional musicians of all ages and spinning the spectrum dial from punk to blues to pop to traditional folk and good ol’ rock n’ roll. She’s even opened for David Johansson and Blue Man Group.

 

 

Subpop recording artist, Joel Thibodeau was in her first band, The Vitatonics, and was her duet partner for a couple of years. “We called ourselves The Hiccups,” says Maria, “I’m usually solo now accompanying myself on guitar or piano or with the amazing fiddler Shayna Gonsalves (from New Bedford).”

Besides her incredible vocals, playing guitar, keyboard, sax and a little bit of drums helped open doors to Maria. By her own recollection she’s played gigs in about 30 different venues from Maine, NH, RI, MA and 9 in New York City alone, earning many repeat invitations. Her father, Steve Ventura, also a song-writer and playwright, said “Maria’s even done some avant garde theatre.” All that stage experience has built a comfort level factor for Maria that Barbara Streisand could only dream about.

 

 

Close to home, Maria has strong supporters at both Rick’s Music World in Raynham and Steve’s Backstage Pass in Taunton where she frequently introduces her new material at their open mics. On Thursday, Nov 16th Maria will be the featured performer at Rick’s Open Mic which starts at 7PM.

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