Mary Lorson is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

musician A musician is a person who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate one who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters who wri ...

and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. Best known for her time as the lead singer of

alternative Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * ''The Alternative'' (film), a 1978 Australian television film * ''The Alternative ...

pop groups

Madder Rose ''Rubia'' is the type genus of the Rubiaceae family of flowering plants, which also contains coffee. It contains around 80 species of perennial scrambling or climbing herbs and subshrubs native to the Old World. The genus and its best-known sp ...

and Saint Low, Lorson has gone on to release albums with The Piano Creeps and Mary Lorson & the Soubrettes. She lives in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named a ...

Biography

Lorson was born and raised in the suburbs of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and formed Madder Rose with Billy Coté in 1991 in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

. When Madder Rose disbanded in 1999 she founded Saint Low with bassist Stahl Caso, violinist Joe Myer, pianist Michael Stark, vocalist Jennie Stearns, and drummer Zaun Marshburn. Lorson and Coté toured with

Tanya Donelly Tanya Donelly (born July 14, 1966) is an American Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and guitarist based in New England who co-founded Throwing Muses with her step-sister Kristin Hersh. Donelly went on to co-form the alternative rock band ...

from 1996-7. Lorson and Coté have collaborated on film scores including the original score for "What Remains: The Life and Art of Sally Mann" for

Steven Cantor Steven Cantor is an American film/television director and film/television producer. Eight of his films have been nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards, with two winning, including the 2022 Outstanding Documentary prize for When Claude Got Shot. W ...

and

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

. She and Coté have a son, Roman. A breast cancer survivor and high school English teacher, Lorson is the author of "Freak Baby and the Kill Thought," an original screenplay about the life of

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

singer and actress

Eva Tanguay Eva Tanguay (August 1, 1878 – January 11, 1947) was a Canadian singer and entertainer who billed herself as "the girl who made vaudeville famous". She was known as "The Queen of Vaudeville" during the height of her popularity from the early 1 ...

. The album "BurnBabyBurn," released by Mary Lorson & the Soubrettes in 2011, features a version of Tanguay's 1922 song "I Don't Care." Lorson's projects also have included developing a television series, "Old School"; scoring the independent web series "The Chanticleer"; a multimedia performance memoir, "Signal"; and setting a chapter of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

's ''

Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction whi ...

'' to music, for the

Waywords and Meansigns ''Waywords and Meansigns: Recreating Finnegans Wake n its whole wholume' is an international project setting James Joyce's novel ''Finnegans Wake'' to music. Waywords and Meansigns has released two editions of audio, each offering an unabridged m ...

project. Her 11th full-length album, "Themes From Whatever," was released in November 2017.

Discography

Mary Brett Lorson

*''Themes from Whatever,'' 2017

Mary Lorson & the Soubrettes

*''BurnBabyBurn'', 2011

The Piano Creeps

* ''Future Blues (for me and you)'', 2008

Mary Lorson & Saint Low

* ''Realistic,'' 2006 * ''Tricks for Dawn,'' 2002 * ''Saint Low,'' 2000

With Billy Coté

* ''What Remains,'' original score, 2007 * ''Barrier Device,'' original score, 2004 * ''Two Left Shoes'', original score, 2003 * ''Piano Creeps'', 2003

Madder Rose

* ''Bring It Down,'' 1993 * ''Panic On,'' 1994 * ''The Love You Save'' (EP), 1995 * ''Tragic Magic,'' 1997 * ''Hello June Fool,'' 1999

External links

Official Mary Lorson webpage

References

American women singer-songwriters American singer-songwriters Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-songwriter-stub