Powell was born on August 22, 1868 in Peru, Illinois, United States. She was the daughter of William Bramwell Powell and Minnie Paul. Her father was an author and school superintendent; her uncle, Maj. John Wesley Powell, was the distinguished ethnologist and pioneer explorer of the Grand Canyon. Her mother was of German-Hungarian ancestry and was an amateur composer, and the daughter showed musical talent at an early age. In 1870 the family moved to Aurora, Illinois.
Maud Powell began the study of the violin while attending school in Aurora and continued for four years with William Lewis in Chicago, where she also studied piano with Agnes Ingersoll. At this time she often appeared in concert as an infant prodigy, and also made a six weeks' tour with the Chicago Ladies' Quartet through Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Her unusual gifts justified sending her abroad to study with the best teachers, and in 1881 she took a course with Charles Dancla, at the Paris Conservatory. She also studied with Henry Schradieck in Leipzig. She later said of these masters that Dancla "was unquestionably the greatest, " but that while the French method made her an artist, in Germany she learned to become a musician. At Léonard's suggestion she toured for a year in England, playing before Queen Victoria. Joseph Joachim, who had heard her play in London, invited her to the Hochschule für Musik, where she studied with him.
She had début with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1885 when she played Bruch's G-minor Concerto.
Returning to New York she appeared the same year with the New York Philharmonic under Theodore Thomas and during the following seven years made annual concert tours of America, in 1892 accompanying the New York Arion Society under Frank van der Stucken on its tour of Germany and Austria as "a representative American violinist. " In 1893 she played in the same capacity at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and read a paper on "Women and Music" at the Women's Musical Congress. In 1894 she organized the Maud Powell String Quartet with which she appeared in leading American cities until 1898, when the group disbanded.
Maud Powell's favorite instrument, after 1903, was a fine Joseph Guarnerius. Among the conductors with whom she had played were Leopold Damrosch, Emil Paur, Horatio Parker, Wilhelm Gericke, Anton Seidl, and Sir Henry Joseph Wood. A proof of her attainment was her great popularity in Europe, where violinists of eminence were common and audiences critical. In 1898 she revisited London and toured the British Isles and Continental Europe.
In the season 1900-01, after appearing in America, she made a second successful English and Continental tour, during which she played for King Edward VII, the Duke of Cambridge and Edinburgh, and the Princess Royal of England. She repeated the tour in 1903 with John Philip Sousa and his band, in Russia playing "by command" for the Czar Nicholas II. In 1904 she organized a second string quartet but her uninterrupted solo engagements gave her no time for rehearsal or performance, and after a few concerts she was reluctantly obliged to disband the group.
During 1905-06 she toured South Africa with a concert party of her own. In 1907 she substituted for the Guarnerius she had used a large Giovanni Battista Guadagnini of admirable tone quality. With this instrument she continued her alternate European and Ameriican concert tours until 1910. Thereafter she played in the United States, contributed to various musical journals, made records for the Victor Talking Machine Company, and wrote a number of excellent transcriptions for violin and piano.
She died on tour, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
She was a woman with a cultural background rare among virtuosi, kind and generous, especially toward aspirants in her own field, and she won by her charm and native humor many devoted friends.
On September 21, 1904, she married H. Godfrey Turner, of London, who thereafter acted as her manager.
