Mezzo-soprano Maya Hoover is an active performer, teacher, author, and leading scholar and researcher of Latin American art song. Her accomplishments in the performance and teaching arenas have taken her around the world, and her specialty in the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has led her to collaborations with some of today's leading composers. Ms. Hoover has a longstanding partnership with pianist José Meléndez, with whom she has worked as a performing and teaching team since 1997. As a duo, they are known for their cohesive and innovative recital programming, which frequently highlights Latin American repertoire and other outstanding lesser-known works.

Ms. Hoover's performance credits include Festival Internacional Bach, Festival Mozart y Beethoven, and Festimúsica Internacional (Peru); Songs Across the Americas Festival (Bolivia); New Operafestival di Roma (Italy); Bellingham Festival of Music (Washington); Martes por la Noche (Costa Rica); Bloomington Early Music Festival (Indiana); Auditorio Fabio Lozano (Bogotá, Colombia), Teatro Municipal (Peru), and Spivey Hall (Georgia). With such roles to her credit as Mimì and Cio-Cio San in addition to her various mezzo roles, she now focuses exclusively on the mezzo repertoire. As a mezzo, she has also performed symphonic standards such as Mozart's Requiem and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, as well as more contemporary works such as Osvaldo Golijov's Oceana.

Ms. Hoover serves on the Board of Directors of Latin Business Hawaii, and she has also served on the Advisory Board of the Latin American Art Song Alliance, an organization dedicated to the promotion of songs from North/South America, Central America, and the Islands of the Caribbean. She is a supporter of new music, and has given world premieres of both Latin American and North American repertoire. In October 2011, she will perform Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with Chamber Music Hawaii, under the direction of Henry Akina.

Maya Hoover holds a Doctor of Music degree in Voice Performance and Literature with a minor in Music Education from Indiana University, a Master of Music degree from Westminster Choir College, and a Bachelor of Music degree with a minor in Italian Language and Literature from Binghamton University. She has studied with Mary Burgess, Laura Brooks Rice, Patricia Havranek, and Virginia Zeani. Her publications have appeared in Classical Singer, The Mentoring Connection, and the Philosophy of Music Education Review, and her book Guide to the Latin American Art Song Repertoire: An Annotated Catalog of Twentieth-Century Art Songs for Voice and Piano (Indiana University Press) was released in March 2010. In August 2007, she joined the distinguished faculty of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, where she serves as Associate Professor of Music.