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New in 2024: Browse my choral catalogue on Graphite Marketplace and get my music in your hands faster than ever before!

A new SATB voicing of Patterns on the Snow in addition to the original SSAA version is available through Walton Music!

Four choral arrangements of Chausson songs—Les Papillons, Sérénade italienne, Hébé, and Le Colibri—are available via Walton Music.

I’m excited to join La Voz Music Publishing’s catalogue with my arrangement of De colores in both SSA and TBB Voicings.

YourClassical’s Mya Temanson spoke with Mari Esabel Valverde as part of Pride Month and asked the question, “How can you support the work of trans artists?” Listen on YourClassical here.

Or Listen Here:

The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc.’s HearTogether Podcast hosted Mari Esabel Valverde for a discussion with Khadija Mbowe about how she learned to overcome self-doubt, why “respect” is a trap, and why she loves icy people as much as she loves icy weather. 

Mari Esabel Valverde talk about her life, work, and hopes for the future with Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto’s “The Chorus Effect”:

Mari was pleased to join the Composer Happy Hour for a podcast with “wateverandevdramen”:

Episode 3 features a conversation with Mari Esabel Valverde. Mari and I actually met years ago at a bar in Seattle, but unfortunately didn’t have much time to chat. I am so glad that she was able to join me for a drink and a conversation. We had a chance to discuss how artists begin to define themselves as artists, repertoire and required lists, and even briefly chat in French. Her music is gorgeous and challenging, and if you somehow aren’t already familiar with her work – you will be soon.

On this episode of Engender, Nicky and Brad interview composer Mari Esabel Valverde and speak about the honesty of gender diversity, the humanizing power of representation, and expansive notions of choral excellence. We loved this conversation. 

Mari Esabel Valverde joined I Care If You Listen for their “5 Questions” series with composers:

The 19th Amendment was groundbreaking, but only for a frustratingly narrow group of individuals. Would you talk to us about an event, an activist, or piece of legislature that you would also want to be at the forefront of political discussion right now?

To have a feminist movement—to liberate us, to create art to memorialize it, to teach it to recollect its lessons, and to regard it as progress—while ignoring the works of BIPOC women and queer and/or trans or non-binary folks is setting a dangerously low bar. We have more than history in print. We have eachother, now, and it’s late. When the prevailing political ideology dismisses our fighting for genuine freedom as “un-American,” the hours are aching for us to pick up where revolution left off.

Can we shout out to Black and Brown trans women? Activists or not, we are all survivors, and I love and revere us. An LGBTQ history that ignores Miss Major Griffin-Gracy ignores Black trans history and thus tells not “the whole truth.” Similarly, we cannot adequately address immigrants’ rights or prison reform while ignoring the contributions of Bamby Salcedo. These are just two trailblazers who have devoted a lifetime to activism that many of us do not know.

And let’s shout out the Black and Brown transgender and non-binary brilliance of our very generation: actor and CEO of TransTech Social Enterprises Angelica Ross; illustrator, vlogger, and speaker Kat Blaque; singer Breanna Sinclairé; poet and writing coach Amir Rabiyah; and performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, to name a few. Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi—actor, singer, dancer, author, playwright, and teacher—is my collaborator for an upcoming musical work titled “We Hold Your Names Sacred.” I enthusiastically mention these artists because they have so much to teach the world in a space and a time that is trying to erase all of us from existence.

My collective experiences have placed me at this intersection between vocal music, social justice advocacy, and my own half-Indigenous, transgender, female identity. And I am humbled to have had opportunities to create songs like “When the Dust Settles” in honor of the life of the aforementioned “veteran” of the Stonewall Riots Miss Major:

your heart bigger than any cage
even in the midst of so much loss
you remind us to dream
to hold tomorrow between our lips

“When the Dust Settles” © 2018 by Amir Rabiyah

Our footprints on the path towards liberation will concretize only if we hasten to find, fund, and make way for those we have forgotten. Policy matters, of course, but your sisters will die waiting for legislation.

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