Dr. Mary Crowell

Dr. Mary Crowell lives with her husband, Wesley, and their son, Simon, in Athens, Alabama. She has taught piano and composition for over twenty years. As a resident of north Alabama, she currently teaches music theory, music appreciation, class piano, and private piano lessons at Calhoun Community College in Decatur, Alabama. She is a certified YogaFit instructor. She loves playing Rachmaninov, Gershwin, and Bach, practicing yoga, gardening, and gaming with good friends.

She has a B.A. in piano performance from Huntingdon College, M.M. in musicology from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and a D.M.A. in music composition -- also from the University of Alabama. While acquiring these degrees she accompanied ballet classes (and still twitches when she hears "Let's go. Five, six, se-ven, eight!"), helped organize receptions and run concerts as a house manager, graded many music appreciation and history papers, and taught freshmen music theory, ear training, and sight singing.

She also snuck around and performed jazz whenever her teachers weren't looking.

Mary was introduced to filk music by Karen Murphy and John Brewer who paid her way and drove her to her first filk convention -- GaFilk 2001. And now people cannot keep her away with sticks. She's written several torchy songs (Magnus Retail, and Oh Milo); blues songs (Legolas and Page Not Found Blues); and some that defy description (The Song Will Tell Me True). She enjoys making lead sheets for the GaFilk Songbook.

Mary has played concerts at many conventions over the last ten years. Most recently, she was the GoH at Conflikt 2011, and she will be the International Guest in the UK at Duple Time in February, 2012; and will perform with the Three Weird Sisters (Music GoH's) at Consonance 2012.

Poison Ivy, her octet for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, french horn, trumpet, and trombone was performed at the UAH Local Composers Concert in March of 2004. Mary gigs in Athens, Alabama at downtown bookstores and garden markets and the greater Atlanta area.

Mary Crowell's discography includes her first solo album, Courting My Muse (2007), Play It With Moxie Live! (2012) with Play It With Moxie, Third Thyme's the Charm (2012) with Three Weird Sisters, and her second solo album Acolytes of the Machine & Other Gaming Stories (2012) which will be available for sale in October. She has also contributed piano and/or vocals to albums by Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, Cat Faber, Seanan McGuire, Amy McNally, Bill Roper, Mel Tatum, and Adam Selzer.

Or, check out what other things she's up to at www.magnusretail.com!