María José de Bustos studied at the Superior Conservatory of Music of San Sebastián, Spain, and later entered L’École National de Musique de Bayonne (France), working with Françoise Doué (piano) and with Roger Pouzet / Jacques Doué (chamber music). Under Emmanuel Ferrer-Lalöe she refined her technique in Madrid and Bordeaux. She teaches at the Superior Conservatory of Music of Pamplona, she is a master in professional Piano Tuning from the School of Piano Technology of Buenos Aires and writes articles about Colombian composers. For sixteen years, she collaborated with the Basque National Orchestra.
In 2000, she founded, with Maria José Barandiaran, BdBduo, a piano duo, and they have recorded three CDs and performed dozens of concerts over fifteen years. They participated in the film 7 Visiones del Amén, based on the original work of the French composer Olivier Messiaen, fusing dance and music based on the proposal of BdBduo and El Colegio del Cuerpo (a Colombian company directed by Álvaro Restrepo). The film premiered at the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival (FICCI) in 2014 in addition to being shown at the Hispanoscope Festival in Brussels (Belgium). It is currently part of the Euroarts Music catalogue. They were soloists with various Symphony Orchestras under the direction of such Maestros such J. J. Mena, J. Amigo, S. Fraas, J. L. Temes, E. Colomer, P. Dury, J. Ledesma, R, Shade, J. Areán, E. Batíz, T. Golkä, and Ligia Amadio in addition to performing recitals in the most important cities and auditoriums in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa.
In 2019 she was part of the quartet of soloists of the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra by Béla Bartók with the Montevideo Philharmonic and Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestras under the direction of Ligia Amadio and Will Humburg, respectively. She collaborates with María Pagés Company in the show Fronteras and is currently dedicated to her project Reflejos de Macondo together with the renowned photographer Óscar Perfer.
