Dr. Mary Crowell HoF

Dr. Mary Crowell lives with her husband, Wesley in Athens, AL. They have a wonderful daughter, Lilium, who lives in the midwest. She has taught piano and composition for over twenty years. As a resident of north Alabama, Mary currently teaches piano, music theory, Musikgarten, and clarinet in her home studio and accompanies choir at a local Presbyterian Church. She plays bass clarinet in the local community band and sings soprano (and sometimes alto) in the local community choir. She is a certified YogaFit instructor. She loves playing Rachmaninov, Gershwin, and Bach, pottery, practicing yoga, occasional gardening, and frequent 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. More recently, she was the GoH at Conflikt 2011, the International Guest in the UK at Duple Time in February, 2012; and performed with Three Weird Sisters (Music GoH's) at Consonance 2012. Most recently she and her other Three Weird Sisters were guests at FilkContinental 2024 in Wernegerode.

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, her second solo album Acolytes of the Machine & Other Gaming Stories (2012), and her third solo album Scattering Seeds on the Pomegranate Tour (2017). 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, Adam Selzer, and Twotonic. Mary's newest album: I Have Missed You At My Table was released in May, 2022.

Her current projects include a collaboration with C.S.E. Cooney and Tina Connolly. It is a musical podcast in six episodes called The Devil and Lady Midnight. (To be released)

Her web page is at marycrowell.com, and you can check out her Patreon at patreon.com/drmarycrowell!