Maria Katre Osler

Maria Katre is an LA-based singer-songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and producer. She is the true definition of a Multi-hyphenate. Raised by her grandparents in the small town of Ypsilanti, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, some of her earliest and fondest memories are of listening to cassette tapes in her grandmother's car. From a young age, she held a particular love for R&B, soul, and funk; legends like Anita Baker, Prince, and George Benson played often in her childhood bedroom. An old soul, she made a habit of falling asleep to the sounds of smooth jazz playing over the radio. Out of all the many voices across the varied genres she listened to, what drew her in most of all were the horns. Mesmerized by their power and timbre, she picked up the cornet herself in 6th grade. By high school, Maria Katre was singing and playing tuba, piano, and percussion in addition to the cornet. She also found her way to another creative outlet - writing - and her written words won several district competitions throughout grade school. In college, she found her creative energy flowing freely into many fields. She wrote scripts, continued to play piano, sang in ensembles, and produced a documentary that went on to win first place at the Florida Associated Press Awards. However, by the time she graduated from Florida A&M University with her Bachelor of Science in Broadcast Journalism, her focus had narrowed to acting. Dreaming big like always, Marie Katre moved to Los Angeles immediately after graduating in 2009. She eagerly jumped into background work, soon earning enough credits to join SAG-AFTRA, all while gaining invaluable practical experience on the sets of major national television shows like Scrubs. She landed an agent after that, and her acting gigs steadily became bigger and more frequent. But while she had found success as an actor, she realized she had lost her most authentic, multi-faceted self along the way. In the intense hustle of auditioning, filming, performing, and working survival jobs in between acting gigs, she hadn't picked up an instrument in years. Honest soul-searching led Maria Katre back to her path. She made the immense and joyous decision to return to school to study music in 2012. For eight semesters at Los Angeles City College's Herb Alpert Music Center, she studied music composition while still continuing her career as an actor. In every precious moment of free time between auditions, work, and classes, she studied music theory, practiced sight reading, and worked on her ear training. Today, living her most truthful and passionate life, Maria Katre has all of the training, experience, and conviction to freely share all of her talents - much to the delight of audiences and herself. Since returning to music, she has gone on to play trumpet at massive venues, including Beyoncé's Super Bowl halftime show and Taylor Swift's 2014 MTV Music Video Awards performance. She continues to act, and relocated to Oxford, England for a time to further hone her craft at the elite British American Drama Academy. "MO," a short film she both wrote and starred in, is entering the festival circuit after placing as a semi-finalist in the John Singleton Short Film Contest. Summer 2021 is set to be a monumental season for Maria Katre. Her debut EP will be released at the same time that "Why I'm in Wyoming," a short film she's co-written and is also producing and starring in, will begin filming.