Mary Evelyn Moore

Mary Evelyn Moore, a prominent and revered singer, conductor and voice teacher in Great Falls, passed away peacefully June 25 from complications of a stroke. She was 96. A memorial service celebrating her life will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday, July 31, at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 2900 9th Ave. S., with a reception to follow.

Mary devoted her life to music and was widely considered the matriarch of the local music world. She was born May 2, 1928 in Duluth, Minnesota, where she made her debut playing a ukulele and singing carols for her father’s Rotary Club. She graduated to the violin when she stumbled across one in her mother’s closet. The year she turned twelve her family moved to Great Falls for her father’s new job managing the Crane Co., a plumbing and heating supply business, and Mary finally got the instrument she’d yearned for, a Wurlitzer spinet piano. She played it constantly that first night as the rest of the family tried to go about their business. “I probably drove my parents and my brother nuts,” she recalled. “I had not had ever a lesson, (but) I couldn’t get enough of it.”

Her life’s course was set. After graduating from Great Falls High in 1945, Mary enrolled at Northwestern University, where she earned bachelor and master’s degrees in music. She remained in the Chicago area for a time, juggling operatic try-outs with private voice lessons and teaching music and music theory at nearby Kendall College. She conducted one small church choir and sang in another under Austin Lovelace, a nationally known composer who introduced her to cocker spaniels and would become a lifelong friend.

Mary’s primary focus in those days was auditioning. Whenever she had a tryout, she would rent a car so she could warm up on the way, swooping her voice several octaves up and back down again while she was behind the wheel. Her lower, mezzo-soprano voice meant that Mary was most often given character actor parts in operas, seldom the lead. Nevertheless, conductors in the area began to take notice of her rich tone. She sang “Messiah” solos with symphonies in Michigan and Iowa and served one summer on the faculty of the Meadowbrook School of Music in Michigan.

There were other engagements, but the competition was intense. After a time, she began to wonder if she was cut out for singing professionally. Maybe she’d be happier doing community work. In 1959 Mary, then 31, moved back to Great Falls, just as the Great Falls Symphony was being formed. She waited a year and then suggested the symphony form a choir as well, one she would direct. That same year the longtime director of the Congregational Church choir retired and the church hired Mary to take his place.

For a number of years Mary continued to perform. She was the only professional mezzo soprano in the state and she made the rounds, singing solos with symphonies in Missoula, Bozeman and in Billings, where she played the role of Suzuki in “Madame Butterfly.” She performed in Bend, Oregon, at the University of Idaho and with the Spokane Symphony as well as regular oratorios. For two decades she directed the Great Falls Recital Series which, along with the symphony, offered her the chance to perform as Dorabella in “Cosi fan tutte” and play parts in “Die Fledermaus,” “The Medium,” “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” “Old Man and the Thief,” “Into the Woods,” and as the witch in Hansel and Gretel. She took part in Summer Showcases directed by Bruce Cusker, where her favorite role was that of Mother Superior in “The Sound of Music.”

Over time, though, Mary began to focus almost exclusively on conducting and teaching, adept at coaxing the best performances out of her students. She believed that singing was the purest form of communication. By the time she was 40 she had nearly 75 private voice students coming and going from her tidy white house on Fourth Avenue North. She helped adjudicate many district and state music festivals and conducted choirs at the Congregational Church and Christ United Methodist Church as well as the Symphonic Choir. She played violin with the Great Falls Symphony on the side. 

Mary’s students were known for nabbing top prizes at competitions, products of her gentle, expert tutelage, and several went on to pursue musical careers of their own. In 1994 she received the Montana Choral Directors Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award. When she stepped down as director of the Symphonic Choir that year, the mayor proclaimed Mary Moore Day in Great Falls. In 1997 she was a recipient of a Governor’s Award for the Arts, which cited her renown as a regional voice teacher, clinician and adjudicator. 

She retired as church choir director in 2004 but continued to sing with the “Congos.” And she continued to give voice lessons well into her nineties.  

She was preceded in death by her parents, Christy and Nydia Moore, and her brother, J. Allen Moore. She is survived by four nephews: Robert Auflick, Green Valley, Arizona; Jack L. Auflick, Dexter, Michigan; Michael Auflick, Houston, Texas; and Ronald Auflick, Casper, Wyoming; and a host of students and friends. She was especially grateful for her physician and former student, Dr. Brice Addison, and longtime friend Peggy Rossberg, who lovingly cared for Mary in her final years. Other close friends include John Marinaccio, Lynn Faccenda, Kari Cann, Bob and Michelle Thoroughman, and Carol Bradley.

Past and present Symphonic Choir members who would like to take part in Mary’s service are invited to rehearsals at 7 p.m. July 17 and July 24and at 11 a.m. July 31 at the First Congregational United Church of Christ.

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