Mary Alice Druhan

Mary Alice Druhan, d.m.a., has had an extensive performance career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral and opera clarinetist, premiere military band musician, academic performer and guest artist both in the Unites States and around the world. She is an active performer with several groups including Deux Eaux (flute and clarinet), Texas Chamber Winds (harmonie ensemble), Dallas Winds, and many regional orchestras in north Texas. For more information about the composer, visit her website www.druhanclarinet.com

Mary Alice Druhan has worked in the musical field as a professional clarinetist, pedagogue, author, composer and event manager for more than three decades. She recognizes her earliest musical lessons from clarinet teacher Diana Haskell and earliest band classes with Susie Averill as the source of her passion and success in music. Her performance experiences span almost all aspects of modern clarinet performance, from the musical and opera pit to the orchestral stage as well as in both premiere military band (The United States Army Band) and professional bands (The Dallas Winds). She has also performed modern, electric and multimedia music and funded modern commission projects for her clarinet duo, CoCane, as well as several modern projects from composer and former student Ben Stonaker (including a work for 44 contra clarinets premiered in Lincoln, NE). Mary has additionally recorded for many projects and labels, including the grammy-nominated recordings for the Dallas Winds and also for several Hal Leonard and Warner Brothers projects at Omega studios in Maryland, including the reference recordings for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Mary has been a founding member of several chamber ensembles including Deux Eaux (flute & clarinet), Triforia (flute, clarinet and bassoon/saxophone), Duo Lyrisme (flute & clarinet), Texas Chamber Winds (harmonie ensemble) and more. She has performed extensively as a clarinetist with the classical chamber group Mount Vernon Music (formerly the Color of Sound chamber series) on many projects from Bartok to Hindemith to Mozart. Mary's active performance career coincided with her work from the 1990s through the 2020s at three universities where she achieved great success and recognition. Following a severe performance related injury in 2011, Mary shifted her focus to injury research within the field of music performance during several years of therapy and recovery. She has written many articles and has presented lectures around the country on the topics of injury prevention, injury recovery, understanding basics of overuse injury, and self-advocacy for injured musicians. During her own injury and recovery, Mary identified the absence of any resources for clarinetists dealing with temporary or permanent disability of a single hand and created her own materials. She later worked with Cameron Hewes of CAMco Music, LLC to publish her first book, The One-Handed Clarinetists Workbook: A Resource for Individual Hand Development and for Injury-Recovery Periods. Something about this book project sparked her creativity in composition and self expression and she started to write music for solo clarinet and small ensembles as well. Her music is publishes exclusively by CAMco Music, LLC and MAD clarinet. Mary currently lives and performs in north Texas while looking for opportunities to present and perform as a guest artist or clinician or solo/chamber musician as much as possible.