Maria Di Cavalcanti is a piano professor at the School of Music at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She holds a DMA and a master's degree in piano performance from the Louisiana State University (USA), where she studied with Michael Gurt. During her study at LSU, she also studied piano pedagogy with Dr. Victoria Johnson and composition with Dr. Dinos Constantinides. In the United States she joined several chamber and orchestral groups as a pianist. She also spent many years as a pianist in the LSU Wind Ensemble and participated in several concerts by the Louisiana Symphony Orchestra. She has received a scholarship from the German institute Deutscher Musikrat to study with the pianist and composer Ernst Uekermann, at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, Germany, in 1997. In Brazil, she was a private student of the renowned Argentine pianist and composer José Alberto Kaplan from 1990 to 1997. In parallel with her training as a pianist, Maria Di Cavalcanti participated in several harpsichord courses, at festivals and workshops, receiving guidance from renowned harpsichordists such as Jacques Ogg. For ten years (1989-1998) she was a harpschord player in the early music group Syntagma, in Fortaleza (CE). As a composer, Maria Di Cavalcanti had works performed recently at the XXIV Bienal de Música Brasileira Contemporânea-FUNARTE, and at the VI International Congress MUSMAT (UFRJ). Currently, as a chamber pianist, she is part of the trio Brasilianas, alongside Felícia Coelho (flute) and Aynara Silva (clarinet).