[Return to Review, Poem, Pictures, Music]

Short Biography of Mária "Marika" Tobak

Mária “Marika” Tobak, a Mendocino High School Senior who is well known locally for her musicianship, will be graduating this June and heading off to college in Southern California to pursue her interest and studies in Music Composition and Film Scoring.

A multi-instrumentalist, Mária has been a regular on our Mendocino Coast music scene, playing flute and/or electric bass guitar in various bands and ensembles for both the Mendocino and Fort Bragg High Schools , including the Honors Jazz Band at Fort Bragg.  She was a session musician for the Sunday afternoon Jazz Jam at the Headlands Coffee House for almost a year, plays with the Mendocino Coast Adult Community Band, a woodwind sextet, a jazz ensemble, and has participated as a percussionist in concerts with the Symphony of the Redwoods.  

As a member of the Tobak Family Band, she performed locally at the Mendocino Music Festival in Susan Waterfall's production, the “Bartok’s Women” concert; during Fort Bragg's Grand Opening Ceremonies celebrating the newly renovated Pomo Bluffs Park; and in a joint concert with the Slavonian Traveling Band of San Francisco.  In the San Francisco Bay Area, she participated with her family in the Youth-For-Youth World Music Festival, and the Drone Magic International Bagpipe Festival, organized by her parents and now in its seventh year.  Mária has become skilled on the Tekerõ (Hurdy Gurdy) and a variety of whistles, including Furulya, Tilinka, and Kaval.  Mária has confessed that her favorite instrument is the Kaval, of the Carpathians; you can listen to a recording of Mária and Ferenc performing Kavalos, traditional tunes on two Kavals and Koboz.

This past year Mária and her father, Ferenc, were accepted into the Master-Apprentice Program (funded by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts) in an intensive learning experience during which Ferenc taught Mária traditional Furulya music of the Hungarian culture.  

Mária is a two-time recipient of Mendocino Jazz Society scholarships for private lessons, the first student ever to have received this honor twice. She is a California Arts Scholar and earned her first college credits before her sophomore year in high school, attending the California State Summer School for the Arts where she had her first opportunity to study music composition. 

Mária's most productive summer experiences came with her acceptance into the first two GRAMMY Camps: the inaugural Camp of 2005, followed by the second, longer Camp in 2006.  The Camp is offered  by the GRAMMY Foundation and supported by numerous industry giants such as Fox Studios, Epiphone Guitars, and Shure Microphones, to name a few.  Mária was one of only eight students chosen nationwide to study Film/TV Scoring, Arranging and Conducting.  The task was to write the music score to a clip from one of Fox's major motion pictures; Mária chose a scene from X-Men 3 and wrote original music which was ultimately recorded by members of the Fox Studio orchestra - hear Mária's score to X-Men 3: Angel's Cure.

Most recently, she spent one week interning with award-winning film scorer and composer Christopher Lennertz (her teacher during GRAMMY Camp 2006), where she was given real-world tasks of enough significance to earn having her name included in the credits of the Fox movie “The Comebacks” to be released this August.

Mária started composing when she was just 12 years old, with most of the early composition and music theory she learned being self-taught.  Only a year later, one of her compositions was performed by her school band and over the following four years, a few more of her pieces were performed as part of school concerts.   Mária's debut showcase concert  “Of Two Worlds” was the first time she presented her compositions as a body of work.  Listen to Rosie Muto on vocals and Will Lemley on guitar in "Another Sad Song".

[Return to Review, Poem, Pictures, Music!]

Top