Kirstin Maldonado is a well-known American singer, who became famous after joining the A cappella band Pentatonix as a mezzo-soprano. Kirstin has been developing her solo career recently, so her fans are looking forward for hearing new singles from her.
Early life and family
Kirstin Taylor Maldonado was born on 16 May 1992, in Fort Worth, Texas USA, so she holds American nationality, and her zodiac sign is Taurus. Kirstin is of Hispanic descent, having a Spanish-Italian mother, Angelica Maldonado, while her father, Michael Cisneros is Mexican. They supported Kirstin’s desire to become a singer, as the young girl demonstrated her singing skills from the age of five, performing songs and gospels at various events and family celebrations.
Posted by Kirstin Maldonado Fans on Friday, October 28, 2016
Her parents divorced when Kirstin was six years old, but in only two years her mother married another man; Kirstin performed at her mom’s wedding ceremony. At the age of eight Kirstin moved to Arlington with her mom and her step-father, but eventually her mother divorced from her second husband, and became a single parent for Kirstin. In a year she started attending vocal classes at Theatre Arlington, and worked hard to develop her acting skills too, participating in school musicals and productions. While at high school, she spent more than three year singing in the Texas All State Choir.
Educational background
Kirstin started her school education at Holy Rosary Catholic School, and then transferred to James Martin High School, located in Arlington.
Kirstin matriculated in 2010, and then studied for a year in the University of Oklahoma, being a National Hispanic Scholar in term of a full-ride scholarship, majoring in Musical Theatre Performance. However, Kirstin moved to Los Angeles in 2011 to pursue her singing career.
Career
High school endeavors
When Kirstin studied at high school, she met her future band mates – Scott Hoying and Mitchell “Mitch” Grassi, who was also Scott’s best friend, and was one year younger than Kirstin and Scott. The friends formed a trio and started singing at school events. As they felt they were strong enough as a music band, they participated in the local radio competition and became even more popular at school, even though they didn’t win.
They didn’t write their own songs, but were good enough in covering many popular songs. Kirstin had to leave the band to study at college, but soon understood she couldn’t live without the stage, so she dropped out of university and got back to Mitch and Scott.
Pentatonix
At the beginning of 2011, Scott heard of auditions for the third season of the popular NBC music show “The Sing-Off”. He called Kirstin and said she had to be there with them, as Scott and Mitch were already signed for the show. Along with Kevin Olusola, a beatboxer, and Avriel “Avi” Kaplan, a bass, (who were invited to join the band by Ben Bram, the group’s arranger and producer), the aspiring singers formed the A cappella group Pentatonix, and joined “The Sing-Off” show in September 2011, as well as another 15 A cappella bands.
In December 2011 Pentatonix, were crowned as winners of the show, with a prize of $200,000, and getting a recording contract with Sony Music.
During her career in Pentatonix, Kirstin participated in recording six studio albums, including “PTX, Volume 1” (2012), “PTX, Vol. II” (2013) and “PTX” (2014). The band’s latest album was entitled “PTX Presents: Top Pop, Vol. I”, released in 2018. The band was nominated for multiple awards, winning three Grammys: In 2015 and 2016 the band won in the category Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for their cover of Daft Punk’s song “Get Lucky”, and for their performance of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”. In 2017 they won another Grammy in the category “Best Country Duo/Group Performance” for their cover of “Jolene”, originally performed by Dolly Parton.
Acting career
Kirstin tried herself as an actress, appearing in the “Pitch Perfect 2” movie in May 2015 along with her band Pentatonix. In 2016 she was Liz Dervan in the episode “The Strike in the Chord” of the popular series “Bones”, then landed the role of Lauren in the Broadway musical “Kinky Boots”, playing on stage opposite Jake Shears and Wayne Brady in 2018.
Personal life, current boyfriend Ben Hausdorff
Previous relationships
While in high school, Kirstin dated Scott Hoying, who was a secret gay at that time. There is no information if Kirstin knew Scott was gay, but they dated for more than a year, breaking up in 2009. After joining Pentatonix, Kirstin dated her band mate Avi Kaplan, but their relationship was very brief.
In 2013 Kirstin started dating Jeremy Michael Lewis, another singer; they dated for three years and became engaged on 29 May 2016 while on a trip to Paris. Jeremy bent down on his knee and proposed to Kirstin, later posting the photo of the romantic moment on his Instagram account. The couple were preparing for the wedding ceremony after the engagement party, however, the wedding was called-off, and Kirstin and Jeremy split in October 2017.
A little later the popular YouTuber Lauren Riihimaki – better known as LauirDIY – announced that she’d started a relationship with Jeremy, posting their romantic photos in the swimming pool on her social media profiles. Before Lauren, Jeremy briefly dated another Internet celebrity Gabbie Hanna, so Kirstin’s fans supported her, stating Jeremy was a cloud chaser and didn’t deserve her attention, hanging out with famous girls to raise his own popularity ratings.
Dating Ben Hausdorff
From 2018 Kirstin started dating producer, director and editor Ben Hausdorff, who is famous for working on multiple viral commercials for Schwarzkopf. Ben is a graduate of Ithaca College and the International School of Brussels, Belgium. He started his career as a camera intern, working on the popular TV series “The Birthday Boys” in 2013, starring Jefferson Dutton and Tim Kalpakis. From 2015 he worked on such projects as “Dynamite: Victor Saravia Profile”, the short documentary film “The Kingdom That Crumbled”, and the short film “Spider-Man: The Lost Avenger”. From 2017 he started directing and producing music videos, such as “Love Hates Lust” performed by Slicktor Victor, and “Hit It On 1” by Phlatt and Zairrion.
By the end of 2018 Ben produced the Pentatonix documentary series “PTXPerience”, also working as their photographer and videographer. In 2019 he directed Kevin Olusola’s music video “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, Rmani’s “Average” music video and another clip by Pentatonix entitled “The Sound Of Silence”. As of 2020, Ben has completed his work on his latest project, “Higher Education: Principles of Gasnier”, a comedy starring Jake Red and Mike Shaffrey, telling the story of Philip Gasnier, a pot dealer and college student, who tried hard to overturn the marijuana legalization. Kirstin and Ben keep on dating, as of June 2020, posting lots of mutual photos on their social media profiles.
They haven’t announced any updates on an engagement, though their fans keep asking about their future relationship plans in the comments to their romantic photos. The couple, however, keep silent.
Hobbies, favorite things and interesting facts
Kirstin has been friends with inger/songwriter Mitchell Grassi since she was eight years old. She has three dogs – two Siberian Huskies, Olaf and Pascal (named after her favorite Disney characters – a snowman Olaf from “Frozen”, since her first Husky is all white, as a snowman, and a chameleon Pascal from “Tangled” as her second Husky (with multiple shades of color of his fur) and a Pomeranian named Floof, who has his own Instagram account with almost 30,000 followers.
Kirstin’s own Instagram account is entitled “kirstin (™)”, while “™” stands for her full name, Taylor Maldonado, not “trademark”, as it is usually put.
Kirstin is an avid LGBTQ rights activist; since her participation in “The Sing-Off” she’s supported The Trevor Project, a non-profit US organization working on suicide prevention efforts among the members of LGBTQ community.
Appearance, plastic surgery
Kirstin has naturally long dark brown hair, but adores wearing various wigs of blonde, pink and light blue shades. She has dark brown eyes, but wears glasses due to a light myopia. Kirstin is 5ft 4ins (1.63m) tall, weighs around 123lbs (56kgs), and her vital statistics are 33-23-35.
— KirstinMaldonado fan account (@kirstin_KTM) July 17, 2020
In her interview with Asian Fusion Girl in 2014, Kirstin stated that she felt uncomfortable with the principles of modern industry making all the girls look perfect, being skinny, having clean skin, etc. However, she underwent some plastic surgery or cosmetic procedures (Kirstin hasn’t revealed the truth about the procedures she underwent in fact) that altered her look completely. Her fans were very disappointed with her decision to change her appearance, as they liked her for being real, “normal” and not perfect, and after the procedures she was hard to recognize. Kirstin had some beauty injections in her lips to make them look bigger and fuller, and is also rumored to have had injections of Botox, and breast surgery.
Net worth and salary
As of 2020, Kirstin’s net worth is estimated to be around $8 million; she is also reported to have an annual income of around $750,000.
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