Maria Torres Melgares

Program Coordinator

(she/her)

Maria Torres Melgares has earned acclaim for her performances marked by "enticing passion and melancholic yearning" (Tuesday Musicale). A Spanish saxophonist deeply rooted in her Hispanic heritage, she thrives in musical endeavors that connect cultures and nationalities. Her debut album, recorded in July 2023 with her chamber group Flieben Duo, is the core of the upcoming documentary "Transatlantic Connection," recorded by DeCara Films, narrating her musical journey and the process of her CD recording.

As a soloist, she has collaborated with The Cleveland Orchestra as well as performed with the Long Island Concert Orchestra, Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra, Symphonic Band of the Police of Public Security of Portugal, the String Orchestra of the University of Iowa, the New World Symphony, and the ICC String Orchestra. She has received over twenty international prizes in solo and chamber music competitions, including the 1st Prize in the Solo Collegiate Competition of the North American Saxophone Alliance 2024, the prize AIE from ACIMC Competition 2023, 1st Prize in the Vandoren Emerging Artists Competition 2022, 1st Prize in the VIII "Concurso Internacional de Saxofone Vitor Santos" (Portugal, 2021), and 1st Prize of the 94th Concours International Léopold Bellan (France, 2020), among others.

Currently based in Iowa City, Maria serves as the saxophone teaching assistant instructor at the University of Iowa, where she is also pursuing her Doctorate in Musical Arts in saxophone performance, chamber music entrepreneurship, and recording engineering, supported by the Güell Foundation. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a Master of Music degree in saxophone performance and certificates in Arts Entrepreneurship and Leadership, and in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Previously, she earned her Bachelor’s Degree at the Conservatory of Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, with the support of the Fundació de Música Ferrer-Salat.

Authored by Maria Torres Melgares

A Universe in the Ear

Monday, March 23, 2026

What does it mean to live with a sound that has no external source? For millions worldwide, this is the daily reality of tinnitus—a complex auditory symptom that can range from a minor annoyance to a deeply distressing condition. This "universe" of sound is the primary focus of Anna Carolina Marques Perrella de Barros, an audiologist and researcher from the Tinnitus and Sound Intolerance Group at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo in Brazil. Her pursuit of advanced clinical management strategies and research collaboration brought her to the University of Iowa this spring as an Obermann International Fellow. “Tinnitus is like a universe,” Barros explains. “The more you study it, the more you learn and encounter new variables. While it has been the subject of extensive research for a long time, there is still so much more to study.”

Beyond “Not Urban”: Andy Mink on Serving Rural Communities

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

As part of the 2025–2026 Obermann Symposium, Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research (March 26–27), we’re excited to welcome Andy Mink, founding director of the Smithsonian’s Rural Initiative. In his keynote “More than ‘Not Urban’: Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People” on March 27, he'll explore how the Smithsonian is redefining itself as more than a destination in Washington, D.C., becoming a public service accessible to rural communities nationwide through collaborative, community-sourced partnerships that respond to local priorities and challenges. In advance of his visit, Obermann Program Coordinator Maria Torres Melgares spoke with Andy about his work and the ideas he’ll bring to the symposium.

The Texture of Memory: Pervin Saket's Project to Preserve Parsi Heritage

Monday, October 27, 2025

Imagine a small boat on large, dark sea. Imagine families of refugees, with small children and smaller bundles of belongings. Imagine them braving storms and starvation and shipwreck. It sounds like something from yesterday’s news report, but this historical exodus took place between the 8th and 11th centuries CE, when Arab Muslims conquered the once-expansive Persian Zoroastrian empire. Faced with religious persecution, groups of Zoroastrians escaped in boats and landed on the shores of Gujarat in India. Pervin Saket’s project as an Obermann International Fellow focuses on this community, her community, in modern-day India. Zoroastrianism, the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, is now practiced by only a handful of people, and that too is threatened by extinction. Saket says, “In the version I learned on my grandmother’s lap, the Parsis (literally “people of Pars or Persia”) were taken to the local king when they washed up on the shores of Gujarat. Suspicious of the foreigners, he showed them a bowl of milk filled to the brim, to indicate his land was full. The Parsi leader responded by sprinkling a few grains of sugar on the milk. I suspect that the king had a fondness for good metaphors."

maria-torresmelgares@uiowa.edu

319-335-4034