Mary Elizabeth Nordstrom

A member of the American Guild of Organists since 1966, Mary Elizabeth Nordstrom was until recently music director and organist at St. George's Episcopal Church, Sanford, Maine.

A graduate in political science, she developed her Music Appreciation (101 and -2 and -3) and writing skills at Middlebury College in Vermont. She wrote the first Arts column in her native state: "Des Beaux Arts in New Hampshire," for the Manchester Union Leader. She often reviewed NH Music Festival concerts for The Telegram.

The "naturalized North Carolinian" initially relocated with her family from New Hampshire to Winston-Salem, where she wrote "Spotlight on the Arts," in Steve Neal's The Suburbanite. She also represented performing artists there in the '70s. Later, she and her husband, Everett, lived in Chapel Hill, where she researched, published and marketed Outdoor Drama and he was, during most of the '80s, Executive Director of the Medical Foundation of North Carolina, retiring in 1990. Prior to relocating to Maine in the summer of 2004, they lived in Pinehurst and Raleigh. For a couple of years, she was program director for Women of Weymouth and was Dean of the Sandhills Chapter, American Guild of Organists. She wrote occasional reviews for The Pilot. In 1998, she founded the Handel On Hungerannual events in the Sandhills; she hopes that there will be delayed spin-offs to "feed His flock like a shepherd" (Isaiah 40:11) everywhere that Messiah is performed or given in "sing along" readings.

Nordstrom has edited her husband's manuscript, How The Dome Was Done, which relates his professional fund-raising experience as Campaign Director for the late Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles and the Educational Foundation of UNC.

In 2004, she moved from NC to Maine. She is a founder of Classical Voice of New England.

 

Articles by Mary Elizabeth Nordstrom: