In the world of classical music, male orchestra conductors significantly outnumber female conductors. But one Northern Illinois University music professor isn’t letting that get in her way. She shares her story of perseverance despite personal and professional challenges.
“Everyone, except for two people in my life, told me that I was crazy and I would never succeed," said Maria Kurochkina, NIU’s director of orchestras and assistant professor of music. "That's what I had to face.”
She joined NIU in August.
The two people who supported her were her mom and a college history professor.
Kurochkina grew up in Russia and started studying music when she was six. She remembered when she first heard a chorus sing at her school.
“I wanted to join them, because I thought it was so cool,” she said. “And actually, I spent my childhood singing different choruses, and then I saw piano, and I wanted to touch the keys so badly that I convinced my parents that I needed to play this instrument.”
She came to love the Russian composer, Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
“And specifically his ballet, Sleeping Beauty, and also some symphonies," she said. "I don't remember that quite a lot, but Tchaikovsky is still one of my favorite composers.”
Kurochkina is a soprano who specializes in opera, musical theater and conducting symphonic orchestras. A life she never thought she would have.
After high school she went to university to study language. But her academic journey was interrupted by Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“I'm sort of grateful that I had this experience,” she said, “because it helped me a lot, like it helped me evaluate my life goals and my life values at a very young age. And I don't know what where my life, where would it go if I didn't have this experience.”
She’s been in remission for almost two decades.
Kurochkina changed her focus to music. But the notion of a woman conductor was not popular in her country. She forged ahead but ran into another obstacle. When she was 19, she said one of her teachers inappropriately touched her during a lesson. She said she immediately left the room and didn’t return to the school. She stopped taking lessons for about four years.
She decided to try again, and she said she ended up getting the perfect score when taking her entrance exam to attend a Russian conservatory.
“And if you think," she explained, "that after getting this perfect score, I was treated, not better, but at least equal to my male colleagues, that's not the case."
The Donne Foundation — a nonprofit organization that promotes gender equality in music — analyzed more than one hundred orchestras in 30 countries, including Russia. It found that 90% of them are led by men.
Kurochkina worked hard to prove herself. She earned a specialist degree in opera and symphonic conducting from The Moscow Conservatory in 2011. Then, in 2017, she earned a master’s degree from Mussorgsky State Conservatory. Still, she didn’t think she would be able to be a conductor in Russia.
“So, I was thinking how to move my career internationally,” she said, “I was considering different countries. I was thinking about your cultural life, about your history, about your democratic values.”
Kurochkina left Russia on the second day of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. She already had plans to take part in a conducting competition in Paris the next week, so she went to France not knowing what would be next. After two weeks, she found out she was accepted to Boston University and a few months later she moved to Boston to start her doctorate. She finished this year.
Kurochkina’s main goal was to conduct, but teaching has also become a passion.
“The journey that the students make between the first rehearsal and the concert is amazing,” she said. “You will never have that with any professional orchestra, and it is so inspiring.”
Kurochkina said she still wants to perform and work with professional orchestras, but she can make room for both careers.
“I'm so happy that I'm able to work at a university level," Kurochkina said, "where we are encouraged to have both teaching and both performing at a professional level.”
The next NIU Philharmonic Orchestra Concert takes place in February, with Maria Kurochkina on the podium.