MUSE • Musicians United for Social Equity

Biography

Nicole DeMaio is a composer, woodwind specialist, and music educator, born in Bogotá, Colombia and currently based in the New York City area. As a woodwind doubler, she performs on flutes, clarinets, saxophones, bassoon, oboe, and various world flutes. Nicole recently held the Reed 2 chair for the Off-Broadway productions Show/Boat: A River and Welcome to The Big Dipper. She has also worked as a substitute musician on numerous Broadway productions, including Gypsy, Some Like It Hot, Aladdin, Big Gay Jamboree, 1776, Kimberly Akimbo, A Strange Loop, and more. In 2020, Nicole performed the Reed 2 book on the national tour of An American in Paris, and she has served as a clarinet (Reed 2) substitute for the national tour of Fiddler on the Roof.

Nicole’s love for a wide range of musical styles has shaped a versatile career that spans genres and brings her to stages around the world. Recent highlights include performing in Yandel’s Sinfónico Tour in New York City and opening Lincoln Center’s 2025 Summer for the City season with Lulada Club, NYC’s leading all-women salsa group. She has also appeared at Lincoln Center alongside Ariana DeBose in her solo show Authenticity, and performed in Tony Award nominee L Morgan Lee’s solo show at MCC Theater. Additional live collaborations include performances with Gloria Gaynor, Bruce Springsteen, Jordan Fisher, Jessica Vosk, Brian d’Arcy James, Robin De Jesús, Lea Michele, Darren Criss, and others.

Nicole is a member of The Broadway Sinfonietta, an all-women, majority women-of-color orchestra dedicated to uplifting underrepresented voices in the music industry. With the ensemble, she has performed The Barbie Movie: Live in Concert at both the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and the Royal Albert Hall in London. Her other appearances with the Sinfonietta include Carnegie Hall Presents, the Cowboy Bebop 25th Anniversary Concert, Dylan Mulvaney’s 365 Days of Girlhood: LIVE from the Rainbow Room, Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, Laura Bell Bundy’s Women of Tomorrow concert, and more.

She earned degrees in Multiple Woodwind Performance from NJCU, Music Education and Music Theory/Composition from Montclair State University, and a degree in Composition from The Boston Conservatory.

Nicole currently teaches woodwinds at Monmouth University, Kent Place School, and Far Brook School. Before moving back to NJ, she lived in Boston and taught music for grades 7-12 at Boston College High School and private lessons across Massachusetts.

As a composer, Nicole’s work has been performed across the nation and has won several awards. Her piece “Solo for Bassoon Alone” was apart of the required repertoire for the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition. She has previous received awards from Vox Novus, the Pictures Composition Contest, and more. She was recently commissioned by The Rivers School Conservatory, Classical Music Indy, Infrasound, and Yale School of Music’s Music in Schools Initiative.

She is the current Director of Black Sheep Contemporary Ensemble, a group focused on commissioning and performing new music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and audience education. As an arts administrator, Nicole has worked with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO) and the Boston Civic Symphony. She has also served on the administrative teams of tutti, led by Tomoko Akaboshi, and the Hell’s Kitchen Laboratory Orchestra, directed by Isaac Hayward.