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 nineteen years. As a resident of north Alabama, she currently teaches music appreciation, class piano, and private piano lessons at Calhoun Community College in Decatur, Alabama. She also teaches yoga at the Athens-Limestone Wellness Center. 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 and is having a good time learning the ins and outs of the latest incarnation of Finale -- Finale 2008.

More recently Mary played concerts at Confluence 2003, TorCon 2003, GAFilk 2004, and Noreascon Four, Interaction 2005, Conchord 2005 (with Three Weird Sisters), Capricon 26 (as music GOH), Concertino 2006 (as toastmistress), and OVFF 22 (as GOH), and MARCON (with Three Weird Sisters). She was toastmistress for GAFilk in 2004 as well. She was nominated for a Pegasus Award in the category, Best Performer, in 2003, and was nominated for that same award again in 2004 and 2005. Her song, "When I Grow Up" was nominated for a Pegasus Award in the category Best Comic Book Song that year. In 2006 Mary was nominated yet again for a Pegasus award in the category Best Writer/ Composer. Her song, "Legolas" was nominated in the category Best Torch Song. You can listen to "Legolas" in its entirety on Mary's MySpace page: www.myspace.com/magnusretail.

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.

In August, 2004, Mary accepted the invitation to join Three Weird Sisters and looks forward a long and happy collaboration with the band. She also plays with Atlanta based jazz band, Play It With Moxie. She has finished recording Courting My Muse, her solo CD with Greg Robert. Courting My Muse is available through various filk dealers, Amazon.com, and CDBaby.com. It is also available at Pablos on Market, a delightful bookstore and coffee shop on the square in Athens, Alabama!

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

Representative Work for the 2009 Pegasus. Note- this is NOT a song nominated for the 2009 Pegasus Awards.

Some Believe

Copyright ©2003 by Dr. Mary Crowell, All Rights Reserved
Used by permission

This song was composed while driving home to Mobile from Cordele, GA in a torrential rainstorm. I had been at Robert and Beth Cooke’s house for one of their musical get togethers, and was generally inspired by both the weather and the musical outpouring I experienced among my friends. (I also like mummies!)

VERSE
Some believe you always die,
Age a force you can’t defy.
I do.
I shall all the gods surpass!
Hide my heart inside a glass
Imbued
With magic sand that never falls
Frozen in translucent walls.
Powder soft, gives such delight,
My life
Hides in a drift of white.

VERSE
They’re pouring wine upon my skin.
'Slender thread of patience thins
Grows taut.
Will they ever leave this place?
Linen wraps around my face.
I’m caught.
Gravity, it rules us all.
Still, I sought to slow the fall.
Sand in grasping fingers sifts,
My world,
Forever lost in drifts.

INTERLUDE
Wretched thief, who took the box!
'Hid the key.
My heart is locked.
Now, I’m cursed to never die,
Trapped within a rotting lie.
Then they moved me from my tomb
To a land of rain and gloom.

VERSE
Pity he who bares my skin,
Feasts his eyes upon my grin
So wide.
Find my frozen work of art
Shatter it, and break the heart
Inside!
Magic sand that never falls
Frozen in translucent walls.
Powder soft, gave such delight,
My hope
Hides in a drift of white.

INTERLUDE
Hidden high upon a shelf
Rests the glass that holds my Self.
I am cursed to ever live;
They cannot my pride forgive.
My things are with me to remind
Of sunny homelands left behind.

VERSE
Some believe my bird has flown,
Left me here with all I own
Denied
Weigh my heart against a feather,
Dark and heavy like the weather
Outside.
Rain will melt right through this mesh,
All that guards my rotting flesh,
Wrapped up tight against the chill,
My chest,
An empty hole to fill.