Maria De Alvear has been played on NTS shows including The Do!! You!!! Breakfast Show w/ Charlie Bones, with Tannenbaum first played on 4 May 2017.

Maria de Alvear is a Spanish-German composer and was born 1960 in Madrid. She studied harpsichord, piano and composition in both Spain and Germany. In 1986 she finished her studies in "New Music Theatre" at the Cologne University of Music with Mauricio Kagel. She has undertaken musico-ethnological research in places such as North America, Scandinavia, Siberia and North Africa. In 1992 she received the Bernd Alois Zimmermann award.

Maria de Alvear works in interdisciplinary and multimedia contexts as well as in the field of visual arts. She has participated in numerous concerts, installations and performances worldwide, as well as TV and radio productions and documentations (CBC Canada, Arte, TV Espanola, German and Swiss Public Broadcasting companies). Maria de Alvear has also been involved in CD and video productios and art exhibitions.

Her latest works include the opera "Colorful Penis", 2008 (perfomed at the International Festival for New Music, Festspielhaus Hellerau/Dresden), "Sky Music 2" for piano and orchestra in Waterloo, Ontario (with Eve Egoyan - piano) 2009, a soundtrack called "Equilibrio" for the film "The Yishan Island" by visual artist Isaac Julien, premiered 2010 in Madrid, and two world premieres in Darmstadt, Germany ("Im Kern" with Trío Arbós, and "Orgasmus Vulgaris" with Ensemble Modern) in 2011.

In 1998 Maria de Alvear founded the label and publishing house World Edition. She lives and works in Cologne.