Mary DeMocker is instructor of harp performance. She has taught pedal and folk harp classes, multi-level workshops, and harp ensembles since 1988 and maintains an active private studio. She began music study at age five and later studied harp performance with Eileen Malone (Eastman School of Music) and Sally Maxwell (University of Oregon).

Mary has performed widely, including solo appearances at major music festivals, on the streets of Europe and New York City, and in The Cathedral of St. John the Divine where she was privileged to work with composer John Cage.

In South America and Europe, she explored Tyrolean, Celtic, and Latin harp styles and gave house concerts in Brazil and Germany, later receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant to tour her solo program Folk Harp Music from Around the World. Her composition Safe Journey for harp and voice premiered at Oregon State University’s 2004 Nature and The Sacred Symposium.

Mary specializes in using the arts for social change and has written and lectured on this topic, including at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, in major media interviews, and in her 2020 TEDx talk. The Eugene-based Global Climate March & Collaborative Art Project she conceived and codirected was featured in the London-based global climate art festival ArtCOP21, with video excerpts shown to world leaders entering 2015 Paris climate talks.

She cofounded Incredible Earth Circus in 1990 to tour Oregon schools with an interactive nature awareness program featuring original songs with harp. In 1996, she cofounded Acchord to support harpists playing for at-risk youth, and later founded and directed the Willamette Valley chapter of the International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen.

• University of Oregon, Bachelor of Arts, 1992
• Eastman School of Music, non-matriculated study, theory, harp performance 1978-80; 1986-88
• New York University, Gallatin Division, University Without Walls, Bachelor of Arts, 1986
  (Focus: Great Books; three-year independent study in Harp Performance with Wendy Kerner, classical harp, and Ellen Uryvich, Latin, jazz, electro-acoustic harp)

Awards

• 2019 Oregon Book Award nomination for The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution (New World Library)
• Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellowship 2016
• Three-time winner of Ruth Lorraine Close Scholarship, University of Oregon
• Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society