*1976 born in Slovenia, lives and works in Vienna, Austria
as a singer, composer, improvising electroacoustic musician, sound artist, producer, mostly using voice, paetzold bass recorders, own field recordings, DJ-CD, tapes and other lo-fi electronic devices, toys, trash and found objects. Maja made a name for herself in different musical fields, such as early music, contemporary, experimental, jazz, free improvisation, sound art and heavier music. Moving in limbo between analogue and digital art, virtual and real spaces, she tries to expand, deconstruct and reinterpret the tonal spectra of mentioned instruments and to assign them new roles – a process reminiscent of building anagrams. In her Compositions she combines love for simple songs, experimental electro-acoustic, abstract music, early and contemporary classical music as well as elements and forms of noise and rock. The real, the surreal, the fragility, in which both the destructive, abysmal, dark phantasm, but also the beauty, the elegance, the strength are depicting certainty, manifest another engine that defines Maja’s musical creation.
She composes music for dance, theater, film, radio plays, sound instalations and various ensembles and orchestras and writes lyrics, that she performs with her bands. For her live performances and sampling she uses her own built sound libraries like for example, the so-called “Rejects” – a library of unwillingly destroyed sounds, glitches, soundwaste that happened in her own recordings or “broken pianos” – a collection of the sounds of detuned pianos. She gave Workshops in improvised Music in Austria, Slovenia and Korea, founded Maja’s Musik Markt, Listening Sessions and co-organised the 7th Viennese Soulfood Festival in 2013 and has been awarded several prizes and scholarships, ao. SKE Publicity Prize 2007 with L.F.O., in 2009 the Austrian State Composition Scholarship and the Passticio Prize (Ö1 / ORF), as well as a MIA Award 2010. 2014 followed the City of Vienna’s Prize for Composition and the SKE One-Year Grant, also for Composition. The Composition of Rdeča Raketa (Maja Osojnik and Matija Schellander) for the film “One of Us – One of us” (Director: Stephan Richter), was honored at the 27th Kinofest Lünen 2016 with the prize for the best movie music. 2018, she received together with Matija Schellander (Rdeča Raketa) and Natascha Gangl 1. Prize for their new Radio Piece „Wendy Pferd Tod Mexico“ at 9. Berliner Hörspielfestival. In 2021 the group received the Prize “best radio play of the year 2020” at Ö1/ORF for their second soundcomic “Die Revanche der Schlangenfrau – eine klangcomic frei nach Unica Zürn” (the revenge of the snakewoman – a soundcomic dedicated to Unica Zürn). Her last solo debut album LET THEM GROW was released 2016 on Rock is Hell & Unrecords Labels. Rdeča Raketa released their new record “…and cannot reach the silence” 2021 on labels Ventil Records & MAMKA Records. Her solo performances, works and formations, ao. ZSAMM, Rdeča Raketa, Broken.Heart.Collector, All.The.Terms.We.Are, Maja Osojnik Band, Subshrubs, Low Frequency Orchestra etc. were presented at various international festivals. Artist in Residency: DAR Lithuania, Hotel Pupik Austria, Radio Cona Slovenia, Kud Mreža, Jazzfestival Saalfelden. Since 2018 owner of a record label MAMKA RECORDS, dedicated to the publication of high quality self-produced sound recordings in small hand-made series