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= Maria Tecce =

Maria Tecce is a singer, musician, stage and screen actress, and writer. She began her professional career after moving to Ireland in 1998, where she acted in a number of Roger Corman films, including The Unspeakable, Criminal Affairs , Dangerous Curves , Bad Karma, and Wolfhound. Other screen credits include The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax with Angela Lansbury, The Honeymooners, Speed Dating, Inspector George Gently, Rock Rivals, I Hate Musicals, Honeymoon For One, Acceptable Risk, and the short film/music video Love Grows Out of Thin Air by former Tangerine Dream keyboardist and German composer Ulrich Shnauss.

Tecce's stage credits include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Jesus Christ Superstar, Henry VI, Part 2, Eclipsed, The Midnight Court, Slaughter, Tonight: Lola Blau, The Country Boy, Roman Fever, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses, as well as touring her own original one-woman music/cabaret stage shows for which she drew critical acclaim. She also performed, wrote, and was musical director with Irish musical-comedy trio The Nualas for 7 years before leaving the group in October 2018.

Early Life
Maria Tecce was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Mary, a classical pianist and homemaker, and Joseph Tecce. Her father was a first generation Italian immigrant who's family originally emigrated from a small village in the South of Italy while her mother came from the American South. The two met in graduate school, married, and moved to the Boston area. Joseph Tecce was a teacher at Boston College for 40 years before retiring in 2019. Her mother Mary was a talented musician and singer and started Tecce early on playing guitar, piano, and singing show tunes and American folk songs with the family. Tecce played by ear for most of the early part of her musical career and only learned to read music when she was forced to when she picked up the flute in order to join the school orchestra.

Tecce acted in school plays and sang with choral choirs from the time she could stand and continued to perform in dramatic societies and singing groups through her later education at Boston College. Never formally trained as a singer, musician, or actor, she continued to act and sing at local theatres and coffee houses around the Boston area until she graduated from university, having earned her BA in English and Writing and was poised to take on English teaching. Fate took a different turn and instead she travelled West to Dubois, Wyoming to break horses and work as a wrangler and trail guide for the summer, beginning a 6 year stint travelling and working her way across the U.S. and Europe. It was during this period that Tecce stopped performing until 1994, when she began working as an actor, composer, and musician with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts and also began teacher training to become a voice teacher. She was then cast in Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off in the Boston Centre for the Arts and won critical acclaim, turning in a "tour de force performance" (Boston Globe) as Queen Elizabeth/Bessie.

Theatre
Tecce's critically acclaimed role in Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off in the Boston Centre for the Arts marked the beginning of work as a professional performer and also the search for a new home in Europe. She visited Ireland on and off for several years and eventually settled in the small coastal town of Galway in 2000. She acted in local theatre productions and started her own street theatre company Bare Bards Theatre, performing in local festivals and working with Town Hall Theatre, Punchbag Theatre, and Macnas.

Not long after arriving, Tecce was cast in the Irish play Eclipsed with Town Hall Theatre and she continued to perform on stage with her multi-media company “extempo”, where she was director and co-producer, composing, arranging, and performing. Maria produced 3 shows in Galway under the ‘extempo’ umbrella at The Town Hall Theatre and site-specific venues. Maria also began collaborating with members of Poland’s Song of The Goat Theatre Company and continued to collaborate with them both in Poland and London.

In 2002 Tecce was cast as Oberon/Theseus in Corca Dorca Theatre Compan y's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and this was quickly followed by roles with several theatre companies, including The Midnight Court (Town Hall Theatre), Very Heaven (Focus Theatre), The Dream of a Summer Day (Storytellers Theatre Company), Tonight: Lola Blau (Theatre Royal), The Country Boy (Big Telly Theatre Co.), La Marea (Dublin Theatre Festival), Roman Fever (Bewley's Cafe Theatre), and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Gate Theatre). She also performed, wrote, and was musical director with Irish musical-comedy trio The Nualas for 7 years and left the show in 2018.

Music
Tecce began her musical work in Ireland as lead singer and percussionist with members of Irish fiddle player and composer Charlie Lennon’s music family, Sean and Ailish Lennon, in the Lennon Quintet. She then formed ‘The Blow-Ins’ with ex-Waterboys saxophonist and mandolin player Anto Thistlethwaite and began incorporating jazz into her music and it became increasingly prominent in her sets. She put together The Jazz Exiles in with ex-Pat Dublin-based musicians and the five-piece band began playing small jazz venues around Dublin, graduating to larger festivals like Cork Jazz Festival.

In 2004 Tecce debuted the first of her one-woman jazz/cabaret shows Jazz Hot! in Dublin Fringe Festival and continued to produce and perform her music shows throughout venues and festivals in Ireland, UK, Europe, and USA, including All About Love, Songs From The Homeland, Lush Life, Once Upon A Christmas, Torch Song, Night and The City, Viva!, and Strapless. Alongside her music shows, Tecce released three jazz/contemporary cds All About Love, Torch Song, and Viva.  She has opened and shared the stage wih Dionne Warwicke and rodrigo y gabriela, Irish acts Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners, Jerry Fish & The Mudbug Club, Sharon Shannon, Brian Kennedy, and the RTE Concert Orchestra.

Live in-studio versions of two of Maria’s original songs Go Back Home and This Love Is Through, are included on separate CD compilations featuring Grammy Award Winners John Prine, Bella Fleck, and Bruce Mathiske and Irish artists such as Juliet Turner, Damien Rice, David Kitt, Jack L., The 4 Of Us, Kila, and Mary Coughlan.

Film/Television
Tecce began her film and television career in Galway, where she was cast in several Roger Corman films including including The Unspeakable, Criminal Affairs , Dangerous Curves , Bad Karma, and Wolfhound. In 2001 she was cast in a Smithwick's TV commercial and landed her first acting agent Nolan Muldoon Agency. She was then cast in Ireland's long-running soap opera Fair City followed by roles in film and television including Angela Mooney Dies Again, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Angela Lansbury), In America (dir. Jim Sheridan) The Honeymooners, Speed-Dating, Inspector George Gently (BBC), Rock Rivals (Channel 4) Honeymoon For One, and Acceptable Risk.  She has worked alongside actors such as Angela Lansbury, Patrick Bergin, Mia Farrow, Keith Carradine, and Patsy Kensit.

Voice Coach
Tecce began voice coaching in 2004 for both actors and singers. She has coached for Dublin's top acting schools including The Lir Academy, Gaiety School of Acting, and for top corporate companies including KPMG, Volkswagen, Diageo, Ericsson, Virgin Media, Grant Thornton, AIB, Bank Of Ireland, and Google.

Personal Life
Tecce has been involved with many charities and has performed and voice coached for many organizations across the years, most notably the Jack and Jill Foundation, Self Help Africa Ireland, Fighting Words set up by Irish writer Roddy Doyle, National Women's Council of Ireland, as well as Carnation Theatre Company performing theatre and music shows for the elderly and nursing homes across Ireland. She has campaigned rigorously for Gay Marriage rights and Abortion Rights in Ireland and was part of the recent capaigns for 'Yes' votes in the recent referendums in Ireland for both respective causes.